But I wasn’t asleep. Too many confusing thoughts were wrestling with each other in my head. I heard a scraping of claws against metal, a weight on my legs, and then the badger burrowed his furry muscular little body under my blanket with me. Apparently I was forgiven for the unceremonious way I had flopped him off my lap. That was when I finally drifted off — with the words of Phil’s damn sweet song echoing in my mind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When I woke up, the badger was gone, and I could smell food cooking. I’d slept the whole night through, but I wasn’t feeling completely rested. I’d dreamed of a battle. In that fight, a small warrior in a striped robe was battling with a giant creature. That warrior had tethered himself to the ground like some of our fighters had done in the old days when they faced the enemy. It was a sign that he would never retreat. Just before I woke, that small warrior turned to me, his body bleeding in a dozen places, and spoke.
I will die before I let this enemy past me.
* * *
Phil was waiting for me by the fire. He’d kept it burning through the night. And when he’d gotten up, he had boiled water and made tea. He also had cooked a small pile of honey-sweetened corn cakes. He toasted them on a thin flat stone he’d brought in last night before we’d locked ourselves in.
I looked around for my badger friend. There was no sign of him, but that was not all that surprising. He’d probably gone out to hunt as soon as the sun came up. I just hoped my other, smaller, friend Jumping Mouse had found some place that was badgerproof to hide.
I sat down on the other side of the fire from Phil, who handed me a cup of tea and a corn cake.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said.
“Unh-hunh,” I replied. Usually I didn’t like being called sleepyhead, but I liked the way Phil said it, not as anything like an insult, but in a friendly teasing tone. As I drank the tea and ate, I thought about mentioning my dream to Phil. But I hesitated, and as I did so, that troubling dream began to fade. Even though I tried not to show it, I began to feel as close to relaxed as I’d been since starting out on our journey. But that feeling did not last long.
There were no windows in the building. So it was with considerable care that we opened the door. Just in case something was outside waiting for us to emerge.
“Over there,” Phil whispered. “Is that blood?”
A few feet away to our left, the ground showed the sign of a struggle. Torn earth. Gouts of blood and fur. And the dry grass beyond it was streaked with a trail of blood that led back down into the small pines. I looked over at Phil and shook my head. Whatever else we might do, we were not going to follow that trail, which led away to the southeast.
“What happened here?” Phil said, holding his .45 out in front of him as he stood sideways in the doorway.
I didn’t answer at first. I just stood there studying the signs. Some of that fur, a piece as large as my palm that must have been torn away with the skin beneath it in the fight that had taken place, was red.
Red.
That gave me part of the answer. A firewolf, perhaps just a single one that had caught our scent and followed us here, had been waiting to attack us when we left the building. But what had attacked it? Then I heard a low panting sound from the side of the building. Half growl, half whine.
“Rose,” Phil said, “what —”
I held up my hand for silence before he could repeat his question. I moved to the corner of the building, bent low and looked around it.
“Noo!” I holstered my sawed-off and ran to kneel by the badger. It lay on its side, next to the entrance to its burrow that led under the wall, its hind legs twitching. Its small body was covered with wounds, and its breathing was labored. But it still held — with grim determination — another piece of red-furred flesh in its teeth.
My dream made sense now. Perhaps, even through the thick walls and tightly sealed door, I’d heard some of the fight going on in the early hours before I fully woke.
As I reached to slide my hand under the badger’s head, Phil was holding something over my shoulder. A water canteen.
One of the badger’s eyes rolled up at me, and I saw recognition there. It opened its mouth, releasing the piece it had torn from the firewolf in its battle.
“Chirrr?” it growled, so weakly that it was almost inaudible.
I cupped my other hand and held it up for Phil to pour water into it. Then I lowered the water to the badger’s mouth. It weakly lapped some of the water up.
Phil knelt by me. He put one hand on my shoulder as he reached out his other hand and stroked the wounded badger’s head with one finger.
“Can we do anything for him?”
I shook my head. “Not much. But get my pack.”
When Phil returned with it, I took out one of the med-packs that held antibiotic powder and shook some out onto the tears in its skin, most of which were on its broad shoulders and its right side. The badger didn’t resist or react as I did so, even though I knew the powder was likely burning as it fell into those wounds. Phil poured water into his own palm, and the badger drank it, too.
I carefully picked our little warrior up, carried him into the shed, and placed him next to the place where he had been taking shelter. I filled a cup with water and placed it next to him along with a small pile of jerky.
“What now?” Phil asked. “Can we treat his wounds any more?” His eyes were glistening as he looked up at me.
Seeing Phil’s tears made me want to hug him.
“No,” I said.
There was nothing more we could do. I’d felt no broken bones when I’d picked the badger up. If there were no major organs damaged inside, then it might survive. Badgers are tough. Whatever the case might be, this was the home it had chosen, the place where it had wanted to live. This was the place, if its injuries turned out to be mortal, where it would want to die. All we could do now was go.
So, after closing the door and locking it again, we went.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We moved faster than the day before. The firewolf scout that our little striped warrior had driven away had me spooked. Had it been tracking us? Once again, it was outside the range where firewolves had always been before. We should have been a good twenty miles away from their staked-out territory — which was mostly south and west of Big Cave. Did it mean that they were extending their range? Could we trust Uncle Lenard’s map to be accurate about the location of other dangerous creatures?
As for this firewolf, maybe it had been wounded so badly that it wouldn’t be following us.
Or maybe not.
The farther and faster we could get away from last night’s shelter, the better.
As we trotted along, Phil had no trouble keeping up with me. That was good. And he kept quiet. Which was better. True, there were times when he seemed about to say something. More than once, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him open his mouth, then shake his head and close it. Probably thinking better about starting to sing some song he’d made up about one of those Ridge girls.
We quickly put ten miles behind us. By midmorning, we had reached Highway 90 and turned west. But we didn’t travel on the wide former interstate road. Too exposed, visible from miles away to anything with a little elevation — from a hilltop or maybe flying. Friendly birds were not the only things with wings hereabouts, if the rumors were to be believed. They were all second- or thirdhand, heard from the few folks who, every now and then over the past few months, had managed to reach the safety of Big Cave after trekking down from the north. They told stories about things with leathery wings twenty feet wide. The tales were of predators scarily similar to the flying dinosaurs of millions of years ago. From what Uncle Lenard told me, the creatures were said to be a blend, if you could believe it, of condor, crocodile, and bat, with — due to the peculiar tastes of the Dakota District’s Overlords — human genes added for some
insane flavoring.
Uncle Lenard had never seen any of the new age pterodactyls, nor had he mentioned them being in this area when he was drawing his map. He’d shown them way off to the northeast. But somehow, I didn’t find that reassuring. After all, flying things can travel a looong way. Thinking of that made this tight feeling, like a little clenched fist, in the pit of my stomach.
So, we stayed off the road, keeping it to our left. We paused for shelter under whatever trees we could find, then ran through tall grasses and up and down ravines. I kept looking, hoping for the sight of something friendly floating down to me. A hawk, an eagle, even a turkey buzzard. Any bird that could tell me what lay up ahead. But the skies were empty of everything except the silver haze and the glow of the sun. That was not good.
I stopped walking.
“What is it?” Phil asked.
I pointed with my lips toward a line of cottonwoods in a dip in the land off to our right.
“Something’s not right. We need to take a break. Down there.”
That was all I said. No explanation. But Phil didn’t question me. We made our way down into the shelter of the trees that were being fed by the small seep of water that had created a shallow pool. It was green down there in the shelter of those trees and much cooler, not brown and dry as it had been next to the road. Phil slipped off his packs and sat on a flat stone that was marked with the swirling shapes of fossil shells, proof that the plains had been an ocean long ago.
I took off my pack too. But I didn’t sit. Still holding the pack, I walked around the trees, looking up into them until I saw what I thought might be there.
Not one bird, but a number of them. They were huddling close together on a lower limb a few feet above my head and far below the upper branches that hid them from the sky. And not just one kind of bird. Seven crows, a horned owl, a flock of songbirds of all sorts and even a small heron that I would normally have expected to see down in the reeds by the pool. And I could think of only one reason why birds of such different feathers — some of which would normally be totally avoiding, if not eating each other — would flock together like that.
Fear.
The owl rotated its head and then peered down over its beak at me. It hooted softly, and I understood.
“Phil,” I called in a low voice, as I dropped my pack down by the wide base of the tree, which was the biggest cottonwood in that stand. I slid my shotgun from its holster and put my back against the trunk. “Get over here. Bring everything.”
He heard the urgency in my voice and did what I said without asking, taking out his .45 and unslinging Uncle Lenard’s bow from his back. Then we stood there, side by side. The warmth of his muscular shoulder against mine was reassuring, but not enough to keep my knees from shaking.
Both of us were looking up through the curtain of leaves. We could see glimpses of the sky through gaps in the canopy, but my hope was that anything we saw would not see us.
“Quiet,” I whispered. “Stay still.”
Phil answered by placing his hand over mine and squeezing it for a moment. It made my heart flutter, and I bit my lip, not sure if I wanted to say Don’t do that or Don’t let go. But I kept quiet, and he let go.
Phil was the first to catch sight of it.
“Up there,” he breathed in his soft, deep voice. “At two o’clock.”
I moved my eyes, keeping my head still. And there it was, a wide-winged shape. Still high overhead, but gliding down toward the sheltered grove where we watched, holding our breaths.
Closer, closer. I squeezed the stock of my shotgun so hard that my hand trembled. Then, as that black, gliding shape circled farther down, till it was less than a hundred yards away, I realized what I was seeing, and I relaxed, breathing out a sigh of relief.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Just a turkey buzzard.”
I was right, but only halfway.
WHAM!
A much bigger, darker shape came diving in toward the turkey buzzard at an incredible rate. It happened so fast that I could hardly believe what I saw. Leathery wings wrapped around the big bird, which now looked tiny in comparison. We got a glimpse of wide jaws lined with sharp teeth that gaped wide and then thudded shut with a bone-crushing whomp! And then the bat-winged horror had swept past, leaving the sky empty of everything except a few dark feathers floating down.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Oh my god. Oh my god! Did you see that?” Phil said.
It was maybe the most unnecessary question I had ever been asked. But I was not about to criticize Phil for asking it. I knew exactly what he meant. And more than my legs were shaking now.
Somehow, though, I managed to get words out of my mouth, words that sounded a lot calmer than I felt.
“Wait,” I said, lifting the shotgun and making sure I’d pressed off the safety. “Wait.”
As we stood there, waiting, three of the crows that had been in the next tree glided down and landed on our shoulders, two on me and one on Phil.
The one on my right cawked softly and tugged at my earlobe with its beak.
“Yeah,” I said, “Right. Like I am going to be able to protect you.”
All three crows cawked, joined by their four crow companions on the branch, as if saying that we were all in this together. Hopeful little things with feathers. Their optimism actually brought the ghost of a smile to my lips.
Briefly.
I had hoped that by taking shelter as we had against the tree we would not be seen from above or at least that the branches were so thick above us that if we were seen, the monster would have to land away from the tree and make its way to us across the ground.
Hope, though, is one thing, and reality is something else.
And that hope was dashed when we heard an earsplitting shriek from right above us.
“KKKAAAA-AWWWRRRRR!”
We’d been seen.
The other thing I had hoped for when we sheltered under the big cottonwood went out the window — along with all those birds that took off in panicked flight — when the huge bat-winged monster did not land away from our tree, but dived straight into it, breaking branches as it came in like a guided missile.
CRACK!-CRACK!-CRACK!-CRACK!
There was barely enough time for Phil to hurl himself to one side and me to throw my body to the other.
As I rolled, I heard a heavy thud and the thrashing of wings behind me, splinters and leaves flying past my face as if caught in a windstorm. But Batwing had missed me. Had Phil avoided being crushed by it too?
BLAM-BLAM! BLAM-BLAM! BLAM-BLAM!
The sound of six shots in aimed double bursts reassured me that my partner was both alive and striking back.
I pushed myself up. My hair had come free from its braid and hung over my face. I pushed it back with my left hand, lifting the sawed-off in the other — just as a claw-tipped wing as big as a tipi swung toward me. I fell backward, lifting the shotgun and firing. I didn’t aim, but my target was big enough for me not to miss.
BOOM!
“KKKAAAA-AWWWRRRRR!”
Batwing’s shriek that answered my first shot was so deafening and terrifyingly close that I answered it with another shot and a third one.
BOOM! BOOM!
But before I could get off a fourth shot or even focus on where those shots of mine were going, the front edge of one of the creature’s wings struck my arm and sent my gun flying.
I looked up at what I was sure was going to be my death, as the monster’s black sharp-fanged head loomed over me. Its huge leathery ears stuck out to either side of its head. Small cold black eyes focused on me with an angry intensity — eyes in the middle of a face that was part human, part horror. Its long-snouted mouth opened so wide that I could not only see rows of teeth that looked as sharp as spear heads, I could see down its throat and smell the rank, rotten odor of its breat
h as it leaned closer, drooling.
Strangely, all the fear I’d been feeling till then left me, and a kind of calm clarity settled over me. Everything around me came into focus. Leaves fluttering down from the old cottonwood, the brown texture of the earth around us, the creature itself.
Its body was as large as that of a big bear, but not like a bear. No bear ever had green scales outlined with patches of black hair. I could see that at least some of the shots fired by Phil and me had struck its body right in the center of its chest — where its heart had to be. But it had been protected by dinner-plate-shaped scales. All our bullets and shotgun pellets had done was draw a little blood from the surface before bouncing off. Its wings, which spread so far to either side that I could not see the ends of them, were starting to close around me, about to draw me in to that hungry mouth.
That was when the unexpected happened.
“Ca-awk! Ca-awk! Ca-awk! Ca-awk!”
“Ca-awk! Ca-awk! Ca-awk!”
A little whirlwind of black-feathered birds came diving in at Batwing’s face. The seven crows aimed right at its eyes with their sharp beaks. And though they may not have been doing any physical damage, their assault made the creature straighten up and step back, swinging one wing at its little attackers. They dived and dodged, keeping up their attack.
Another step, and now Batwing had its back against the giant cottonwood. It raised its wing, and suddenly a black-ringed arrow pierced its leathery surface, lodging in the trunk of the tree. Another arrow, then a third, a fourth, and a fifth came whistling in. Arrow after arrow came so quickly that I realized Phil was more than just a good archer. He was one of those archers who could put half a dozen arrows into flight before the first one struck.
And those arrows were well aimed. Each struck a different point along the wing, pinning it to the trunk of the tree. The creature turned, thrashing its other wing against the one that was caught, trying to tear it free, its side turned toward me.
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