APOCALYPSE LAW
Page 19
Hoarse Whisperer’s ears discerned the rasping impact of someone moving through palmettos from the wind-tossed treetops and brush colliding in the gathering commotion. He yelled, “Miles, come help me. I’m drowning.”
There was crashing in the brush and a blur of motion. Miles stopped behind a hickory tree. The voluminous midsection of his sweat-soaked body was exposed on each side of the inadequate tree trunk.
Miles timidly pulled his head out from around the hickory just enough to look at the back of Hoarse Whisperer’s shivering head poking out of the water. His skin tingled with nervous tension, all senses on high-volume intensity, eyes funneling in and focusing the images before him in minute detail. He saw a two-foot-long water moccasin swimming upstream towards the head. Hoarse Whisperer’s palpable terror and helpless state permeated the air, eroding much of Mile’s intestinal fortitude. A suffocating feeling there was not enough oxygen in the atmosphere came over him.
The boy could see his eyes, and his eyes told him Mile’s mind was slogging through a miasma of confusion…
…Clouds that had rolled in earlier were building fast now, high and deep under the energy of the sun. The humid air could take in no more moisture. It started to rain, but stopped after a few minutes. A surge of wind, mixing hot air with cool, came down from the darkening sky and swept them without warning. The roar of a soaking downpour rolled across the woodland in an advancing sheet and hit all at once. In seconds, Miles and the boy were nearly as wet as Hoarse Whisperer. The crack of a lightning bolt assaulted their ears and set Hoarse Whisperer’s bowels moving again. He moaned and looked about wild-eyed.
Already, the blood of those fallen soaked into the soil, and the boy’s arm painted the ground crimson where he lay. As it continued to rain, the blood of the living and the dead washed into the creek. Soon, only God would know the blood of the oppressed from that of the oppressor.
Miles said nothing. There had been gunfire multiple times earlier; this was no time to take chances. Carefully, he pulled his head out a little so he could see more to the left. A bolt of lightning struck nearby. He franticly pulled his head back behind the tree. Regaining his composure somewhat, he timidly brought his head slowly out in the open and peered into the streaming slant of the downpour, shivering in the cold rain.
The bark of the boy’s Garand reverberated among the trees and slowly faded into the drenching atmosphere. Miles lay on his back, carbine lying across his chest, eyes staring blankly at boiling storm clouds above.
The wind and the rain continued.
The boy heard them talking. He knew Miles was the last. Still, he did not go carelessly to the creek. He took his time. There was no hurry. Why not make use of every advantage you have? There is always one more thing you can do to put the odds in your favor. Never take unnecessary chances.
He wanted this last one to see his hate before he died, to know why he hated them, to feel something of the value he placed on the two they murdered without thought or feeling. He might as well know before he goes to hell.
There was no way to tell how long the boy’s face had been there watching him slowly drown. He was just there, or his face was, as if he had just emerged from the dripping wall of green as an alligator comes to the mirror surface of a bayou.
His impassive face contrasted with the heat of his eyes. They dominated his face, leaving no room, no capacity for emotion, all emotion in the eyes. They were too old for a young face. The heat of hate stared straight through the drowning killer and a thousand yards beyond at something hideous, visible to the boy only. It would chill anyone who felt it. But the boy was unafraid. He was past fear, past pain, past mercy. He had run all such things into the ground and left them far behind, gasping and dying, ran to death by force of will.
The boy was dead. In his place was born a wild creature of a primordial past, the green gloom of the woodland’s trackless wilderness his environing haunt. The boy had relinquished himself completely to the shadow that had followed him all his life. The shadow had merged with the boy. They were one now.
In his heart lived the Human Spirit, the cumulative product of centuries of lives lived and lost, births and deaths, arisen from the smoke of long ago campfires by the echoes of past drumbeats.
Hoarse Whisperer closed his eyes. The water was now above his mouth, forcing him to breathe through his nose. The sucking in and exhaling of air through his nostrils against the intimately close surface of the water was the only sound he heard above the gentle patter of rainfall in the endless liquid stillness of time.
When he reopened his eyes, the face was gone.