Devils Unto Dust(54)

When the water comes my way I reach for it with my good hand and take a long swig. It’s warm and stale but I have to fight to keep from drinking more. The water sticks in my throat and I struggle to swallow. I finally get it down when my left arm spasms, then goes completely numb.

I freeze and school my features into a blank mask. I try to move my fingers, but my hand stays alarmingly still. I take a deep breath, and another, attempting to calm myself while my heart races. This is all in my head, it is not happening, I tell myself, while my arm dangles uselessly, heavy and immobile. And suddenly I know that this is not my arm, but a dead snake hanging from my shoulder. I don’t know how it got there, but it is punishment, I think, for all the rattlers I’ve killed.

“Will,” Micah says, nudging me. Why isn’t he screaming?

“Give it here,” he says, and I blink and everything falls back into place. I hand the water to my brother, trembling. I flex my bad hand and stare at my curled fingers. I don’t know if what I see is real anymore, but these are the only eyes I have.

“Micah,” I say, my lips stumbling over the familiar name.

“What?”

“I—” I have to tell him. I have to, because if I can’t trust myself, he’s the only one left.

“Let’s go,” Curtis calls, and the words die on my tongue.

“Will?” Micah asks, frowning, but I shake my head.

“Nothing,” I say, turning away. “Just a headache.”

We have nothing to pack, so we simply stand up and begin to walk, all of us determined. Soon. I’ll tell Micah soon.

“Not far now. It’s uphill from here,” Curtis says. “We should be able to see the wall from the top.”

I focus on his words. Somewhere up this road is Best, and Pa, and the end of this journey. If I can just keep it together a little longer, this trip won’t be for nothing. I need to get my head straight; there is still work to do, and I need to do it. I can’t go all to pieces, not yet. Not yet, I repeat to myself. Not yet.





PART FOUR:


THE


DARK


The good die first,

And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust

Burn to the socket.

—William Wordsworth





43.


Ben spots three shakes before we hit the second mile. Micah and Sam scramble for their guns while Curtis barks orders; I wait for the fear to hit me, but I’m too sluggish to feel much of anything except resignation. It happens quickly this time, workmanlike and grimly common. Curtis fires the first shots and the shakes come running; we all fire and one by one they fall down screaming with bullets in various parts of their bodies. The last gets close enough for me to see his eyes are a lovely dark blue. Ben yells at me to get back, but I stay in place and watch as the light goes out of them, watch as that lovely blue begins to cloud. I don’t know which bloody holes belong to me, my aim is so unsteady that I reckon not even one. At least I was right to hire the Garretts; I would never have been able to shoot this many shakes dead with only my gun. I make up my mind to practice shooting at moving targets, until I remember that it’s pointless.

I’m starting to feel like I’ve been walking forever, like everything else is simply a dream, a life I imagined for myself while I keep walking. One foot goes in front of the other, the movement repeated infinitely. I can’t remember not walking, I can’t remember my feet not aching.

It’s strange not to be able to trust myself, not to know if my mind is still mine, or if it’s starting to break apart. If I’m not sure, if I doubt myself, does that mean I’m still sane? If I’m worried, am I still me? I can only hope.

We pass another mesa, the flat ridge even with the horizon. We pass a clump of long-dead shakes, too decayed to even smell, their bones riddled with bullet holes from some other hunters in some other nightmare. The land is rockier here, more uneven, the dirt redder. The road slants uphill over a small crag and shale crunches underneath our boots. It’s slippery where the rock is crushed fine, and I turn my feet to keep from skidding. We reach the crest of the hill and Curtis pauses, pointing ahead as if we can’t see the massive walls rising up.

“Best,” he says.

Sam whistles low, impressed. The wall is nothing like the fence we have in Glory; the reach isn’t as high, but it’s made of stacked stones, not wire choked with tumbleweeds. It looks like it would hold against cannon fire, let alone shakes.

“They ain’t fooling, are they?” I ask, staring at the thick iron and wood gate set into the stone. This place is a fortress, not a town.

“No ma’am,” Curtis answers. “You stay in Best, you stay safe.”

“Come on,” Ben says, pushing forward. “We ain’t getting any younger.”

I’ve never been to another town, and only now do I realize how little of the world I’ve seen. It’s pathetic, really, that I’ve spent seventeen years in one small spot. Pathetic, and unfair, because I never had a chance. There are so many places I never got to see, cities built wider and taller than I can imagine, oceans stretching farther than I could see. If things were different, would I have actually done it? Packed up and moved north, after the twins were grown? I’m not so sure anymore. Underneath it all, maybe I’m just a coward, too afraid of anything new or different. Who is to say I wouldn’t have spent the rest of my life in Glory, till I was old and blind and full of could-haves and what-ifs. Maybe I was never meant to leave.