by Raisor, Gary
Matt continued to struggle as the thing poured into him, his body arching backward, contorting in agony, but the fight seemed to be going out of him. He bounced on the cave floor, looking like a broken puppet being tugged along by a careless, impatient child.
Steven was reaching out with his unhurt arm when Matt raised up and looked at him. The eyes had changed—something cold, inhuman, stared out from Matt's face.
Enraged at his own helplessness, Steven grabbed Matt and shook him. Blood was still flying from every crevice of the old man's body, even his crotch. He was pissing blood.
"Fight, damn you." Steven struck him across the face.
The old man stiffened, his eyes filming over, and for a moment the Matt he knew was looking back at him. But Matt seemed to be dwindling away, as though he were being dragged downward to some terrible, distant place. His eyes held the pleading look of a drowning man each time he struggled to say something.
At last, in a strangled whisper, blood spilling from his mouth, "For God's sake, shoot me, son. Don't let it have me. Promise… don't let it… promise."
Steven nodded and the bitter taste of ashes filled his mouth.
The old man's struggles were growing much weaker. The thing was almost totally inside him now, and whatever made Matt Thomas human was just about gone. The friendly blue eyes glittering like chips of winter ice when they rested on Steven.
The man who played billiards for money knew what he had to do, and he knew nothing he had ever done would be as hard.
Reaching down, he picked the Sharps off the floor, raised the heavy stock to his shoulder, pulled back the hammer… and slowly pointed the rifle at Matt. His finger inched forward like a blind worm until it wrapped around the trigger. He gradually increased the pressure, trying to hold the rifle steady while the blood thundered in his head. His teeth were bared like those of an animal in pain as he tried to pull the trigger.
"I can't do it," Steven pleaded in a grainy whisper, "don't make me. Please don't make me."
His finger loosened its grip and he let the huge rifle drop to his side.
And then the screams started; in their pain and rage, they were the most awful sounds Steven had ever heard. He didn't believe such cries could come from a human throat. They went on and on.
Steven knew he could no longer stand by and let his friend endure such agony. He raised the rifle and again centered the sights on Matt's forehead.
A look of calm appeared on Matt's face. "Good-bye, Mister billiards player." He tried to smile. "I still say the game ain't going to catch on." And with those last words, Matt was gone. The creature was completely inside him now.
Steven squeezed the trigger. Gently… just the way Matt had taught him… and at that moment a part of Steven Adler died, too.
Steven dropped the rifle, started to turn away.
Movement caught his eye, stopping him dead in his tracks. Matt, in a pool of his own blood, was moving in broken, wet circles the way a bug will alter being stepped on. Fear flooded Steven's insides with a warm liquid rush. The top of Matt's head was gone and he was still moving.
Steven jammed a hand into his coat pocket and found more shells for his .44. Working quickly, he reloaded with hands that shook so much he could barely hold the revolver.
This time he didn't hesitate. The pistol jumped in his fist and a foot-long tongue of blue flame erupted from the barrel. For an instant, everything became bright as day, letting him see his shot was a good one, catching the thing that had once been Matt Thomas high in the chest. The impact of the slug lifted the creature from the floor and flung it backward against the cave wall.
Steven's ears were ringing, but he heard its labored efforts to rise and fired again. His shot went wide this time. In the flash, he saw the thing smile, showing teeth that were a startling white in the blood-drenched face. He fired again before it could move, and his next four shots found their mark, pinning it to the wall. Blackness streamed from each bullet hole, and when it hit the floor, the blackness began crawling toward him.
With a moan, Steven flung the pistol. There was no stopping the thing. He wheeled and ran blindly from the cave, paying no heed to the cold that waited outside. His only chance was to get to the horses. He heard the jingling of their harness, but they seemed impossibly distant as he plowed through the drifts. His feet kicked up gouts of snow that hung in the air like shattered faces.
There was no moon. The animals were shadows in the dark and they were spooked, dancing sideways, shying away from the stink of fear on him. Several times he almost edged close enough to grasp the reins that dangled in front of him, but each time they managed to elude him. Around and around they went in a mad dance, until his footing betrayed him and a windswept patch of ground, frozen hard as iron, rushed up to drive the breath from his body. He lay paralyzed, listening to the wind blow softly through the ice-covered branches, causing a tinkling noise that sounded like glass. As he watched the trees sway, he heard steps crunching in the snow. Grunting with the effort, he raised up and scuttled sideways, a crab covered with white.
The horses were mad with fear as Steven staggered nearer. They must have caught the scent of what was behind him, because they bolted. In a second they would be beyond his reach. Steven, gathering his fading strength, flung himself forward. His hand touched a heaving flank, sliding downward, and he felt himself falling. The animal stumbled and his fingers wrapped around a piece of the harness, slipped, then grabbed hold. His arm was nearly wrenched from its socket. Ignoring the blackness that danced at the edges of his vision, he held on.
A shot rang out. The horse squealed, a sound nearly human in its agony, and pitched sideways in the snow. The wounded animal floundering, trying hard to rise. Another shot came, and Steven heard the bullet strike home. The horse let out a final death rattle before going limp.
Steven struggled to free himself from beneath the crushing weight.
"You weren't planning on leaving me here, were you, son?" the familiar voice said, moving closer. "All alone, in the cold. I thought we were partners. Remember?" Then came laughter. Obscene laughter.
Steven noticed that sickening odor was growing stronger and he tried with all his might to get loose. But he knew it was too late. Already the tendrils were drifting down toward his face like cold, black snow. He screamed and his screams floated across a vast dry prairie that had never been touched by rain. In the blinding sun he watched a medicine man draw near, and the earth began to tremble with a stain that grew dark on the horizon.
The figure stopped and Steven saw it was an Indian dressed in ragged gray buckskins and a funny stovepipe hat. The broad copper face regarded him without expression. In the distance, the dark stain had drawn close enough for Steven to see it was a herd of buffalo, but what a herd it was, an ocean of heaving flesh stretching farther than the eye could see, rippling and swelling as though torn by a storm.
On and on they came, and the world became filled with distant thunder.
Steven could feel the rumbling deep in his bones. Soon they were near enough for him to see that every animal was soaked in blood. It dripped from their straining flanks, it spilled from their gasping mouths, turning the ground red. He caught their smell, the stench of sweat and dust and blood, and worst of all—the smell of fear.
Steven fell to his knees, unable to stand upon the trembling ground. "What does all this mean?" His voice was drowned by the growing thunder. "Why have you brought me here?"
The skeletal figure said nothing, and the buffalo kept on spilling across the prairie, drawing nearer, and the dust they kicked up blotted out the sun. Steven waited in the gathering darkness.
Just when it seemed they would be crushed in the stampede, the Indian doffed his hat and everything changed.
The charging herd disappeared in the wink of an eye and Steven saw desolation beyond knowing: skeletons by the hundreds of thousands glistening pale white beneath the sun, buffalo skeletons, dried and polished by the sun and wind, and among the bon
es, Steven saw entire tribes wandering aimlessly. They moved through the carnage, their gaunt faces bearing the specter of hunger. Their sorrow was a great cry that rose like the carrion birds on the wind. Then it was swept away. Never to be heard again.
Steven looked across the plains and saw things that defied understanding. He saw warriors sitting by darkened fires, heard the lament of the women as they tried to console hungry children. The red men prayed to the old gods, calling upon them to stop the slaughter, but their prayers fell upon deaf ears.
The old gods were powerless before the advance of the white man who rode upon the iron horse, sweeping everything before him.
Some things Steven witnessed he didn't understand at all. He saw Indians dressed in white-man clothes, living in white-man houses that seemed to be made of metal. There was no pride in their faces. Many were lying drunken on the street in the shadow of buildings so tall they blocked the sun. Others climbed from strange looking wagons that moved without horses and went into places that colored the night with all manner of bright lights. When they came out, the smell of whiskey was upon them, their steps were drunken.
Stranger sights awaited. He saw many of them cross great oceans to die in battles in places he had never seen, using weapons that cut men down like wheat in the field, fighting the white man's wars, and their names were not spoken with honor even though their blood was spilled just as often. Their numbers, like the buffalo, dwindled to a few and they no longer prayed to the old gods.
They now lifted their voices to the white god.
All this Steven witnessed and more. How long he stood there watching, he had no way of knowing. One by one the strange sights disappeared, until only he and the medicine man were left on the vast plain. The wind blew and it was a high keening that sounded as lonely as dying.
The medicine man began to chant and, somehow, without ever being told, Steven knew it was a death chant he heard; there were no words, really, only a wavering anguished cry that rose and fell. Mourning a people who wandered a world that no longer held a place for them, speaking a farewell to a way of life that had been lost forever, lamenting a people who had even forsaken their gods.
The sad, wavering voice rose and fell for a moment longer. Then, turning his back to Steven, the medicine man placed his hat back upon his head and began walking away, each step covering an incredible distance until; finally, he was gone from sight.
At that instant the buffalo returned, and when the first horn pierced Steven Adler through, he learned that a god, even a dying god, can still thirst for vengeance.
In the spring the thing that had taken over Steven Adler left the cave. By summer it had moved into Arizona, feeding and killing as it went. There it found a group of Army deserters.
A week later every man, woman, and child in Crowder Flats, except one, was killed. The one survivor, a Navajo boy who would become Amos Black Eagle's grandfather, said the killers were dressed in blue.
Chapter 19
Jake's Place, 3:00 A.M.
The sign was off, the parking lot deserted.
Except for an old Jeep Cherokee.
Oil spots decorated the gravel. In the moonlight, they looked like fresh blood.
John Warrick sat alone at the long bar in the dark, sipping a Lone Star, waiting, trying to hold on to his anger. Anything to keep from running. The trouble was, he hadn't been able to hang on to anything—not love, not hate, not anger. Not even his life. It had all slipped away somehow. One night at a time. He was tired way down deep in his soul and he wasn't sure of what he would do tonight.
He didn't know if he would even survive the night.
The beer was clammy in his hands and, when he took a sip, it tasted bitter. Like fear.
That was the only emotion he could hang on to.
The odors of spilled booze, too many unfiltered cigarettes, and cheap perfume clung to the room, bringing back memories of all the nights he had spent here when he was young. Elvis, the Stones, Ray Charles on the jukebox, on the radio, loud laughter, girls trying to be women, boys trying to be men. Nobody knowing how. They had fumbled toward adulthood in the dusty seats of old pickup trucks out there in the dark, sure that once they were grown, they would have the answers.
Instead, all they had were more questions.
He and Thomas Black Eagle and Martin Strickland had hung out in Jake's back room, playing pool every chance they got, each boasting to anyone who would listen that he was the best.
But never putting it to the test. Afraid that if they did, they might not be friends anymore.
Friendship was more important to them back then.
They believed in it.
In those days, they were young and their dreams lay spread out in front of them like the shimmering highways that led out of Crowder Flats.
The years had chipped away at their dreams, wearing them down to the bare bone, until finally there was nothing left to believe in. Thomas Black Eagle had been the lucky one, he had died young. Before he had seen all his dreams die, before he had become one of the walking dead.
Now there really was nothing left. Martin and Thomas were dead. Leon, too.
That didn't seem fair, because John knew he was the one to blame for what had happened.
He should be the one who was dead.
John had Steven Adler's cue stick lying in front of him on the bar, and he tried not to look at it, but his eyes were drawn time and again to its seductive yellow length. He felt dirty whenever he looked at the cue. Like he had been violated. Like something had been stolen from him. Moonlight, the color of old dimes, spilled through the window, caught the emerald eyes of the serpent and turned them into fire. The red feathered serpent lay coiled around the handle, watching his every move, as though waiting for a chance to strike. He resisted the urge to move his hands away.
John was scared of the cue that had almost killed him twice. He was more scared of the man who owned it. His stomach bore the marks of what he had gone through at Amos's, two jagged wounds where he had been gored in his dream.
The wounds had been seeping blood earlier, but Louise had put bandages on them.
In the quiet John relived his peyote vision, and again saw the herd of buffalo, heard the distant thunder of their hooves as they made their endless trek across the plains. He felt the fear, the revulsion of Matt Thomas as he was invaded and taken over in the lonely cave, the pain of Steven Adler, who had tried to end his friend's pain. John felt the searing agony of the buffalo horns tearing into his stomach, but more than anything else, he felt the horror of Steven Adler, who had once been human, and was no longer. At the end of the vision, John had heard Steven's voice crying out and knew there was still a man in there who begged for release. A man who couldn't even kill himself to be free.
What could it be like to live with something alien inside of you for 120 years, making you torture and kill?
Never being able to escape?
The lean pool hustler again looked out the window, anxious for this meeting to be over. He was here to make the trade, one cue stick for one five-year-old, and then he was out of here for good. Headed someplace far away. Maybe he could convince Louise to come with him. Crowder Flats held nothing but sadness for the both of them. Maybe it wasn't too late to start again. He'd give anything for a fresh start.
He looked out the window again, saw shadows on the moon.
The waiting was eating away at his nerves, filling him with doubt. His hand touched the gleaming wood beneath his beer bottle, sought out the slight darkness there, the darkness that was Thomas Black Eagle's blood.
This was the first time John had been in the bar since the night Thomas had been killed. He wished Steven Adler had chosen another place to meet. Any other place. Sitting here in the dark, surrounded by the tired ghosts of his life, made him think, and that wasn't something he liked to do. Thinking made him feel old and used up. The past followed him around like an insistent panhandler, one who was never satisfied no matter how much money was
laid in his greasy palm.
There was movement in the back parking lot, lights flashing across the window, the sound of tires crunching on gravel, and John was almost grateful that the meet was under way. At least he would be doing something, instead of waiting. Anything beat that. He moved over to the window and watched as Leon's old red Caddy pulled in. The sight filled John with anger.
And fear.
The car sat there idling, then went silent. After a bit, the driver's door swung open and a blond man stepped out into the night. This time he wasn't wearing a sweat shirt and jeans and high-tops, this time he was dressed like an Old West gunfighter. Or at least the Hollywood version of one. Everything was black, from the flat-brimmed Stetson on his head, to the vest, to the duster that whipped in the wind, to the boots on his feet. He should have looked laughable in such a getup. But he didn't. He looked scary as hell.
John tried to see if anyone else was in the car. The Caddy looked empty. Where was the blond man's partner? Where was Timmy Cates?
This was supposed to be a straight trade. John felt panic, forced himself to be calm.
Even though there were five windows facing the back parking lot and the bar was dark, the blond man's gaze found the window John watched from. He smiled an easy smile and winked, as though the two of them were sharing a private joke.
John backed away from the window.
This was the man who had stuffed Leon Wilson in a freezer before Leon was even dead.
Man was the wrong word, but John couldn't force himself to think of Steven Adler in any other terms. If he did, he might not be able to go through with this.
According to what Elliot Cates had said, the thing inside Bobby Roberts was at least five hundred years old, maybe more, and it was afraid of this man who stood so easily in the parking lot.
What could cause such fear?
John watched Steven Adler approach the bar. The blond man moved casually, unhurriedly, and yet his head was raised and his eyes seemed aware of everything around him. His shoulder-length hair flowed out behind him, a golden mane rippling in the wind, as he moved across the parking lot. There was something animal-like about the way he walked, and John felt as if he were watching a sleek jungle cat closing in on its prey.