Killer of Enemies

by Joseph Bruchac

  Then I saw something. It moved so fast. It was like a muscled length of rope throwing its coils out to the side as it moved along over the moist sand, leaving S-shaped patterns behind it. I recognized it as a sidewinder, a kind of rattlesnake.

  It was not coming toward us, just crossing in front of us.

  But I grabbed my father’s hand tighter and shrank back in fear.

  Dad dropped down to one knee and put his arm over my shoulder.

  “Lozen,” he said in that soft reassuring voice of his, “There is no need to be afraid. That one has his own job and is just doing it. If you do not bother him he will not harm you. The Giver of Life made him, too. He has as much right to live as we humans.”

  I understood. And I let go of my fear. I respect snakes. But that does not mean I have to love them. They go their way and I go mine.

  Or at least that is how it has been until now.

  I’ve heard the old saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But not if the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy.

  As I pushed the trail bike through the gate of Haven, I’d gotten a poisonous look from Edwin. He was the only one in that little group of men trying to look casual who had stared my way, his cheek twitching as he did so.

  But the unbidden thought I read from his mind was not the usual one containing graphic images of his disgusting fantasies.

  She thinks she’s something. But just wait. Her time is coming, sooner than she thinks.

  No. I can’t worry about Edwin now, though. I need to concentrate, keep pushing on as far as I can before nightfall, planning what I need to do to survive until tomorrow.

  This little carefree jaunt of mine is going to require me to spend at least one night in Bloodless territory. No way around it since the only way to reach my objective—what used to be the private estate of a wealthy and powerful art collector—is by passing through the outskirts of Sun City. Not into Sun City itself, which is fortunate for me. With care, I could survive a descent into that hellscape where no people—real people—live anymore. Just the Bloodless. But no one would attempt that if they could avoid it.

  And it is a lovely day for a ride. I even pause for a few moments on a hilltop vista where I can look out over the hills, purple with sage, and listen to the lilting song of the cactus wren sticking its head out of a hole in a tall saguaro. I observe the rusting wrecked vehicles by the roadside and count the burned-out hulks of houses in the valley below.

  What I need to find is a relatively intact dwelling near a handy hillside. Not an adobe, but a house made primarily of wood. There are going to be few trees where I spend the hours of darkness. I need the wood of that house for fire, not shelter. Unless you can lock yourself inside an abandoned bank vault, overnighting in any dwelling within ten miles of Sun City is tantamount to suicide.

  Maybe I could find a bank vault. But no. Any such vault might already be occupied, seeing as how vaults are just as good at keeping out those nasty old sun rays as cellar holes and attics, where the Bloodless pass away their dormant hours. Another reason for me to stay the outdoorsy type.

  I keep one eye on the sun as I pedal along, giving silent thanks to our old brother in the sky for its life-giving light. With my other eye I keep watch for just the right place. And there it is. Far enough out to be isolated and unburned, but close enough to make it a perfect stopping place three quarters of the way to my final (let’s hope not) destination.

  I park my bike and lift my goggles to look the place over. It’s a large ranch-style house at the end of its own little driveway straight up from the road. Big windows that let in a lot of light—and air, seeing as how the glass is all gone. A hill that rolls down behind it. And a dried-up reddish brown yard in front of where there had once been well-irrigated lawn. No trees or big stones for anything to lurk behind as it creeps toward me in the twilight.

  I take out the eighteen-inch pry bar I’ve packed. Then, holding it in my left hand, my .357 in my right, I insert it between the front door and the frame. True, I could have crawled through the space where the plate glass window once looked out onto a verdant yard. But the chance of cutting myself and being in an awkward spot halfway in and halfway out when . . . well, you know. The lock pops free, but the door sticks when it is part way open. One front kick does it, not only opening the door but ripping it off its hinges to fall with an echoing crash on the floor of the hallway that—like the other rooms in the house—appears to have been stripped of everything valuable.

  “Honey,” I call out, “I’m home.”

  No answering hellos, growls, or slobbery snarls. An excellent start.

  It’s a ranch style, constructed on a slab since the bedrock is too close to the surface to make a basement. So aside from a possible crawl space overhead—which I am not about to explore—there is just one floor to check out before I start.

  I contemplate how to do this. I reach back to the bag slung over my left shoulder and pat its lumpy contents. I could take out one of the party favors that Guy provided me for the particular task I hope to accomplish at Dragoon Springs. Toss one into the house ahead of me and then . . .

  Nah. Too noisy. Plus I may need every one of the seven he gave me at my ultimate destination tomorrow.

  So I just grasp my .357 in both hands. I double check to make sure the safety is still off. (You’d be surprised, Guy once told me, how many people forget that one little detail until it is too late and something’s teeth are lodged in your throat.).

  Take a slow breath, start moving from one room to the next.

  My back is against the wall with the gun held ahead of me till I reach each doorway. It’s a long hall with one sharp turn in it. Then I take a quick step and a half turn to face into each successive room with the gun held ahead of me, ready to fire at the center mass of whatever is lurking in there as my eyes sweep from floor to ceiling, corner to corner.

  Kitchen. Clear.

  Living room. Nothing living.

  Den with no denizen.

  A trio of bedrooms. No Goldilocks, no three bears.

  Three bathrooms without a single psycho in the showers.

  Two-car garage with no cars within.

  Nada.

  Safe enough. But not a place I would want to spend the night.

  Then I hear something. The unmistakable sound of heavy feet coming my way down the hall. Booted feet. With spurs. Coming from the direction of the last bedroom. Did I check the closet in that bedroom? I did not.

  I put my back against the wall, lift the gun with both hands. I’m ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Then the footsteps pause and a voice comes from around the corner.

  “Whoa, partner. Wouldn’t shoot an unarmed gans, would you?”

  I’m not sure I heard what I just heard. I’m even more unsure when the one who said that steps from around the corner. It’s a frigging cowboy. With a big silver lawman’s badge on his chest.

  “Stop,” I say.

  The cowboy’s wide handlebar mustache twitches as his mouth shapes itself into a wide smile.

  “Whatever you say, little sister,” he says. His voice is warm and reassuring, but the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. “I'm here to help. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  I look at his face. It looks as friendly as his voice sounded. But something is wrong here. I slide away from the wall, back into the living room. The cowboy takes a step toward me and his spurs jingle as he does so.

  I raise one hand and motion him to keep coming forward. “Slow,” I say.

  His smile gets even broader. “Sure thing, little sister. That makes sense. ’Bout as much sense as me looking like this, hey?”

  “Sit,” I say, gesturing at the couch he’s just reached.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” he says. He lowers his long, lanky frame down onto the couch. And as he does so I notice two things. Numero Uno is that his face has changed. He looks younger now. His mustache is no longer gray, but black. Numero Dos is that the overstuffed c
ouch cushions did not give way under his weight.

  Gans, he’d said. I hadn’t heard it wrong.

  “Ayup,” he says. “That’s me.” And as he says those three words his voice changes. His accent is no longer that of a cowboy out of one of those old western movies. It’s as deep and resonant as thunder coming out of the mountains.

  My namesake spoke to the spirits. They visited her from time to time, just as they visited all of our people who fasted and prayed for help from those ancient beings. The gans. The mountain spirits who have helped us now and then. In the old days, back in the early twenty-first century, there were still times when our people would put on the sacred paint, wear the tall cruciform headpieces, and dance as the Mountain Spirits.

  But I haven’t been fasting. Or seeking a spirit guide. Or have I?

  The figure in front of me flickers, his shape blurs for a moment. Like the flames of a fire moving when struck by a gust of wind. Or a dark whirlwind. And for just that moment he is so terrible, so beautiful, as beautiful as our ancient peaks, that it takes the breath out of my lungs. Then he is, once again, an old Arizona Ranger. With a smile on his face.

  Why a cowboy? I think.

  The gans chuckles. “Why not?” he says. “Seeing as how when white people used to see a guardian spirit, they’d say it was an Indian, more often than not. And you being Chiricahua, little sister,”—he spreads his arms—“you get to see a cowboy.”

  A spirit being with an Apache sense of humor. It figures.

  What have I done to earn this? I think.

  “Why have I come to you, little Lozen?” the gans replies. He’s no longer smiling. His speech no longer sounds like that of an old cowpuncher. It’s more formal, more serious. His shape is no longer human. “Do not look for any reason that your logical mind can grasp. Just know that we have seen you. And I have shown myself to you to encourage you, just this one time. You will not see me again, but you must remember that you are never alone on your journey. Be brave, little one.”

  He pauses. Is that it? But it’s not. Just before he vanishes he looks over my shoulder, as if seeing something or someone there.

  “I have also been sent to warn you that, in another way, you are not alone. There are enemies behind you.”

  And then he is gone. There’s no sign he was ever here. Perhaps I could explain it away by saying I’ve been under stress for so long that my brain is playing tricks on me. That is what my logical mind would conclude. But not the part of me that is Lozen. And his warning is apt—I’ve got work to do.

  I holster my gun—but do not snap the strap in place. Then I set to work with my pry bar.

  By the time I am done, I’ve demolished the interior walls and reaped an excellent harvest of nice, dry eight- to twelve-foot-long two by fours. I place them in three tall, carefully spaced piles along with heaps of trim—which will make excellent kindling to add to the brush I’ve gathered, all to be piled into three tipi-shaped stacks.

  Stack Numero Uno: directly behind me and fifty feet from the front window of the house. It’s the biggest of the three and the one I need to keep burning the hottest.

  Stack Numero Dos: eight feet from the back fire and directly to my right.

  Stack Numero Tres: an equal distance from the back and to my left.

  Then I take my place in the center—more than halfway surrounded by my blazes, which I start with my flint and steel when the sun is still a hand’s width from the horizon.

  Build it and they will come. Uncle Chatto used to say that all the time and chuckle. I never quite got the joke, but it is for sure true about the Bloodless. Nothing attracts them more at night than a fire. Like moths to a flame, they come creeping in. The next thing the person huddled in front of that fire knows, there are two clawed hands around his or her neck and some very sharp teeth fastened in said soon-to-be-deceased person’s neck.

  If that person is stupid enough to sit staring into a fire. The proper place for a night fire is at your back when you are dealing with such former (we assume) human beings. I’ve heard theories about how they came to be. A virus, a genetic mutation, a gene-splicing experiment that was meant to cure a certain kind of immune-deficient disease that popped up a few years before the Cloud and caused severe anemia. Or maybe it had to do with some sort of old darker magic coming back after the electricity was dampened.

  For whatever reason, the result was the rise of the Bloodless. And when they were set free by the chaos after the electronic apocalypse, it turned out they could propagate more of their kind. Getting killed is one thing, but it is way worse as far as I am concerned to get turned into a creepy-crawly who only comes out at night.

  A lot of people—myself included—think that maybe the Bloodless have been around for longer than some think. Like the vampires of legend, maybe they (or others like them in the past) are the basis for such stories all around the world. Including among our Chiricahua people and the other original peoples of this continent. And when electricity and bright lights vanished from the world, they were free again to reclaim the dark.

  So why build a fire if it attracts them? Because they will come anyway, attracted to my own body heat. And with fire, especially fires like these I have strategically located, I can see them and have some control over the situation. According to Guy, they are drawn to fire, but also leery of it.

  The creature shows up soon after the sun vanishes. Which makes me think that there may be some caves in the hillside off to the left of me. Of course he does not expect me to have seen him. Stealth characterizes the way they stalk up on you.

  I clear my throat. “Ahem,” I say.

  My stalker freezes while still about forty feet away.

  He (it’s a male, a tall long-haired one wearing tattered jeans and a black jacket) stands up from where he was crouched down and creeping forward. He raises one hand and takes a step.

  “Hello,” he says, just a trace of a growl in his voice. “Good see you here. I join you? I sit with you? Yes? You tired. Why you not rest? Yes. Go sleep, rest now?”

  Whatever it is that makes them what they are also makes them somewhat language challenged. They can speak English and even better Spanish. But only in short phrases and not always with good grammar. But they are clever and somehow they are able to hypnotize most people with their voices.

  But not me. I hope. Despite the seductive, reasonable tone of his voice, I say nothing. I concentrate on staying awake and alert as I shove more wood into the fire in front so that it blazes up higher.

  My false friend barely stifles a snarl before recomposing his face into a toothy grin. He brushes his hair back from his face, beckons with his hand. A hand whose fingernails are as long and sharp as the claws of a vulture.

  “No. Fire too hot. Cool out here. Come out here, better out here. Fire too hot.”

  He’s talking faster now, being more insistent because he’s frustrated that I haven’t fallen for his line of crap. Or have I? He’s closer than he was before and I don’t remember seeing him move. But I stay where I am.

  His hands are trembling. His body is tense. But the fires and my obvious resistance have discomfited him. His mouth is slightly open now and I can see his sharp canine teeth. A little line of saliva is creeping down the right corner of his mouth.

  I haven’t unholstered my gun. I could shoot at him, sure. But shooting doesn’t always work with the Bloodless. Unless you hit them just right, a bullet goes right through them. Then they just keep coming. And at the sight of a gun they move so fast that getting off an accurate shot—even for me—isn’t a certainty.

  Plus, I wonder if he’s alone.

  I’ve heard that they hunt in pairs, staking out their own little portions of the nighttime landscape as their own.

  The female of the pair may be somewhere out there in the night behind him. Not behind me. My fire is too big for that direction to be to her liking. Without the protective wall of the fires I’ve built the two of them would already be on me like two mountain l
ions on a rabbit.

  “Tired,” the Bloodless male says. He has moved a step closer to me. That is not good.

  Focus, girl.

  “Tired,” he says again. “You tired.”

  No, I’m not. I hold hard to that thought.

  He is grinning even wider now, all resemblance to humanity gone. Showing all his teeth—more than the average human mouth could hold. Toothy, I think. I’ll call him Toothy. And what should I call his as-yet-unseen mate who may be planning to sweep in on me like a storm wind as soon as Toothy makes his move? How about Mariah? Like that old, old song my mother sometimes sings. “They Call the Wind Mariah.”

  “Tired, tired.”

  He takes two steps closer. I’m awake. I see those steps.

  “Sleep now. Sleep,” Toothy repeats in a growly whisper. And my eyelids are feeling heavy, despite my attempts to concentrate, to stay awake.

  Another step, nearly near enough to leap.

  I close my eyes. And as soon as I do so, that familiar stab in the middle of my forehead comes along with his breathless, ravenous voice.

  Yes!

  Timing is everything. I open my eyes just in time for my feigned slumber to work. Toothy is in midleap as I lift my staff, its sharp blade already extended. It catches him square in the throat. The butt of the staff screaks as it grinds against the bedrock under his weight.

  Toothy’s eyes are wild and his clawed hands are trying to reach me. But the staff is too long and the angle of penetration into his throat has taken it up into his skull. Somehow it has missed the spine, but it is not doing any favors for the back of his brain. His thrashing is no less wild, but it’s not as focused.