Ashes (19 page)

He grabbed a mug and drew it full. In the
fading light, the lager looked like piss, flat and cloudy. Camp
wrinkled his nose and took a drink without bothering to remove his
chaw. He swished the ale around and swallowed.

"Any good?" Lucas asked, eyeing the stairs,
expecting some grazed-over jackaroo to come stumbling down the
stairs with his pants around his ankles.

"Nope," said Camp, but he quickly drained the
rest of his glass and refilled it.

Lucas pulled a stool out from the bar and sat
down. He thought about trying the ale, but decided against it.
Night was nearly here, and he didn't want to be slowed down by
drunkenness. "What do we do for a bite?"

"Well, we can't eat no mutton, that's for
damned sure."

"I've been eating kangaroo. Hasn't karked me
yet, but I used up the last of it a couple of days ago. Thought
about killing a rabbit, but it's hard to bang one with a
pistol."

"How do you know rabbits don't got it, same
as the sheep?"

"Rabbits haven't been eating people."

"Least as far as you know."

Lucas had to nod in agreement.

Camp gulped down another mugful and wiped his
mouth on his sleeve. "Nearly time."

Lucas nodded again. "Saw a general store up
the street. Might have some rifles and ammo."

Camp pulled another ale, the yeasty stench
filling the room. Or maybe it was Camp himself that stank. "You go
ahead. I'm aiming to knock back one or two more, to get my nerve
up."

Lucas got off the stool and went outside,
pausing on the porch to make sure no sheep had strayed from the
herd. The sun was almost gone now, the west streaked with purple
and pink rags. It had been three weeks since Lucas had last watched
a sunset without dread crawling through his bones. Three weeks
since a sheep was just a sheep. Things go full-on berko real
fast.

He went up the street, his hand on the butt
of his revolver. Something rustled in an alley to his left. He spun
and drew, his hand trembling. A crumpled hat blew out into the
street. He sagged in relief.

He shook like a blue-assed fly in a
windstorm. He pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes, glad no
one was around to see him like this. Word got around fast when a
fellow broke down.

A small rise of land to the left was bathed
in the dying sunlight. A few wooden crosses still stood askew, but
the picket fence marking off the cemetery had been trampled into
ruin. Wadanetta's boneyard had been plowed up by gut-hungry sheep.
Lucas pictured a whole herd of them, pawing and snorting to bust
into those pine boxes and get at the goods inside.

He hurried to the general store. It was just
as desolate as the knock shop had been. Cobwebs hung on the
shelves, but he found a few blankets and a box of bullets for the
revolver. All the rifles were gone. Some money was left in the
register. Lucas didn't take it.

Camp staggered into the store, his Remington
over his shoulder. "Could have told you they'd be no rifles," he
said, his words slurred. "I took the last one."

"Bloody hell? You been here before?"

"We'd best get over to the jail. Sheep smell
us, they'll be going crazy. They might be able to climb stairs, I
don't know. But they sure as hell can't bust through steel
bars."

They went into the street again, Camp leading
the way. A soft bleating swept in from across the plateau. It was
followed by another, then more of the man-eating sheep raised their
voices.

"Ever wonder who's riding herd on them
things?" Camp asked, not slowing.

Lucas looked behind them and saw a dust cloud
roiling on the horizon. Appeared to be several hundred of them. The
drum of hoofbeats filled the air. He hoped the jail was
well-built.

"I mean, you figure it's the devil or
something?" Camp said, belching. "A sister from Lady of the Faith
Church told me them which don't repent would have the devil to pay
someday. Figure maybe someday's finally here?"

"I don't deadcert know," Lucas said, his
voice thin from fright. Darkness was settling like molasses,
clogging Lucas' lungs and tightening his throat. He saw the jail
and almost wept in relief. It was brick, squat, and solid, with
iron bars across the windows.

Camp pulled a key from his pocket and opened
the thick wooden door. A pungent odor struck Lucas like a fist. The
stink reminded him of something, but the hoofbeats were so much
louder now that they filled his senses, bounced around in his
skull, drove every thought from his brain but the thought of
sanctuary.

He stumbled into the dark room and Camp
closed the door behind them. Camp dropped a crossbar into place,
then shook it in its hasps. "Safe as milk," he said. "Let's see
them woolly-eyed buggers bust into here."

Lucas bumped into a table. He ran his hands
over its surface. Something fell to the floor and glass shattered.
Flies buzzed around his head.

"Damn," Camp said. "You busted my lamp."

The stench was stronger, so thick that Lucas
could barely breathe. The herd was closer now, stampeding into
Wadanetta, a hundred haunted bahs bleating from bottomless
mouths.

Camp's voice came from somewhere near the
wall. "I like to watch them come in," he said. "They's something
lovely about it. 'Specially when the moon's up, and all them eyes
are sparkling."

Lucas put his hands over his ears, squeezing
tight to drive out the noises of the stampede. He thought of all
the people who had filled those bellies, who had been stomped and
ground into haggis, who had served as leg of lamb for this devil's
herd. The first of the horns rattled off the brick. The building
shook, but Camp laughed.

"They can't get us in here," the old man
shouted over the din. "You'd figure the dumb bastards would quit
trying. But night after night they come back. Guess I ought to quit
encouraging them."

A match flared. Camp's face showed in the
orange circle of light. He was beside the window, grinning, his
rotted teeth like mossy tombstones. The Remington was pointed at
Lucas' heart.

Lucas forgot about the sheep. He'd had guns
pointed at him a time or two before. But never like this, with his
guard so far down. He was in no shape for a quick draw.

"Don't try it," Camp said. "You might be
fast, maybe not, but you're not likely faster than a bullet."

Horn and snout hammered against the window
bars. Camp put the bobbing matchlight to the end of a candle. The
room grew a little brighter, and Lucas saw what stank so badly.

Naked bodies, three of them, hanging upside
down inside one of the cells. Chains were wrapped around their
ankles. One of them might have been a woman, judging from the
swells in the red rags of flesh, but Lucas couldn't be sure. His
heartbeat matched the rumble of the herd outside.

"Remember out there, when I rescued you, and
I said I don't like to see a man get ate up?" Camp said, his voice
as low and sinister as that of the sheep. "Don't like to let good
meat go to waste, seeing as how it's getting so scarce and all.
This free-range hunting is hell on an old man like me."

Camp sat on a chair, the rifle barrel steady.
Lucas held his hands apart. He could see the tabletop, scarred and
pitted, a dark and thick liquid on it. A nun's habit was folded
over the back of a chair.

"Our Sister of the Lady of the Faith," Camp
said, picking at his teeth with a thumbnail. "Mighty good eating.
Figure it's the pureness of the flesh what makes it so sweet."

Lucas wouldn't have minded going down from a
bullet. In fact, he'd always suspected that's the way he'd meet the
Lord. Beat getting eaten by a Merino any day. But to know that this
greasy bugger would be carving him into dinner portions was more
than he could stomach.

"Hell, it's the way of things," Camp said,
tilting back in his chair. "People eat sheep, then sheep eat
people. What's so wrong about people eating people?"

Something slammed against the door, and two
horn tips poked from the wood beneath the crossbar. Camp turned to
look, and Lucas knew it was time. He rolled to his left, filling
his hand with his oldest friend the revolver, and squeezed off
three rounds without thinking. Camp gave a gasp of pain and the
Remington clattered to the floor.

Lucas lifted himself up and blew the smoke
from the revolver's barrel. Camp slumped in the chair, holes in his
chest. The scent of fresh blood aroused the herd, and heads butted
frantically against the brick walls. Camp's eyes flickered, the
light in them dying like the last stars of morning.

Lucas wondered how long the herd would mill
around. Daylight usually made them get scarce, but one or two of
the orneriest would probably hang around. Maybe they'd get rewarded
for their trouble, if they just happened to find some fresh meat
out on the porch. One thing for sure, Camp would be nothing but
gristle and rawhide. Hardly worth fooling with.

Lucas sat at the table. He'd heard that other
people had turned to it, but the thought had sickened him. Until
he'd run out of kangaroo. Hardly seemed unreasonable anymore, even
for a man who followed the Lord. Camp's logic of the food chain fit
right in with these balls-up times. And his stomach was squealing
with all the intensity of a fresh-branded sheep.

Camp had been a fine butcher. The meat was
thin and tender. Lucas stuck Camp's butcher knife into a slice and
held it under his nose, checking its scent. Hell, not much
different from mutton, when you got right down to it. His belly
ached from need, and he wondered if that's how the sheep felt.

He chewed thoughtfully. The taste wasn't
worth savoring, but it wasn't so terrible that he spat it out. He
speared a second piece and held it up to the candlelight.

"You know, Sister," he addressed the meat.
"Maybe you were right. Someday might just be here after all."

Maybe the Good Book was right, too, that the
meek were busy inheriting the earth at this very moment. Lucas
figured it would be humble and proper to offer up a word of
prayerful thanks. He bowed his head in silence, then continued with
the meal that the Holy Father had provided.

Outside, in the dark ghost town of Wadanetta,
the chorus of sheep voiced its eternal hunger.

###

THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE

Silence wasn't
golden
, Katie thought.
If silence were any metal, it would be lead: gray, heavy,
toxic after prolonged exposure.

Silence weighed upon her in the house, even
with the television in the living room blasting a
Dakota-Madison-Dirk love triangle, even with the radio upstairs
tuned to New York's big-block classic rock, even with the windows
open to invite the hum and roar from the street outside. Even with
all that noise, Katie heard only the silence. Especially in the one
room.

The room she had painted sky blue and world
green. The one where tiny clothes, blankets, and oversized books
lined the shelves. Wooden blocks had stood stacked in the corner,
bought because Katie herself had wooden blocks as a child. She'd
placed a special order for them. Most of the toys were plastic
these days. Cheaper, more disposable.

Safer.

For the third time that morning, she switched
on the monitor system that Peter had installed. A little bit of
static leaked from the speaker. She turned her head so that her ear
would be closer. Too much silence.

Stop it, Katie. You know you shouldn't be
doing this to yourself.

Of course she should know it. That's all she
heard lately. The only voices that broke through the silence were
those saying, "You shouldn't be doing this to yourself." Or else
the flip side of that particular little greatest hit, a remake of
an old standard, "Just put it behind you and move on."

Peter said those things. Katie's mom chimed
in as well. So did the doctors, the first one with a droopy
mustache who looked as if he were into self-medication, the next an
anorexic analyst who was much too desperate to find a crack in
Katie's armor.

But the loudest voice of all was her own.
That unspoken voice that led the Shouldn't-Be chorus. The voice
that could never scream away the silence. The voice that bled and
cried and sang sad, tuneless songs.

She clicked the monitor off. She hadn't
really expected to hear anything. She knew better. She was only
testing herself, making sure that it was true, that she was utterly
and forever destroyed.

I feel FAIRLY destroyed. Perhaps I'm as far
as QUITE. But UTTERLY, hmm, I think I have miles to go before I
reach an adverb of such extremity and finality.

No. “Utterly” wasn't an adverb. It was a
noun, a state of existence, a land of bleak cliffs and dark waters.
And she knew how to enter that land.

She headed for the stairs. One step up at a
time. Slowly. Her legs knew the routine. How many trips over the
past three weeks? A hundred? More?

She reached the hall, then the first door on
the left. Peter had closed it tightly this morning on his way to
work. Peter kept telling her to stop leaving the door open at
night. But Katie had never left the door open, not since—

Leaving the door open would
fall under the category of
utterly.
And Katie wasn't
utterly.
At least not yet.
She touched the door handle.

It was cold. Ice cold, grave cold, as cold as
a cheek when—

You shouldn't be doing this to yourself.

But she already was. She turned the knob, the
sound of the latch like an avalanche in the hush of a snowstorm.
The door swung inward. Peter had oiled the hinges, because he said
nothing woke a sleeping baby faster than squeaky hinges.

The room was still too blue, still far too
verdant. Maybe she should slap on another coat, something suitably
dismal and drab. This wasn't a room of air and life. This was a
room of silence.