Only Killers and Thieves(51)

Billy noticed and waited for him.

“What was that?”

“You got any water?” Tommy croaked.

“They said to save it till camp. You’ve none left at all?”

Tommy shook his head. “Please, Billy.”

He reached for his flask. “If you weren’t so bloody jumpy you’d still have your own.” He pulled out the stopper with his teeth, handed it across. “Just a sip.”

Tommy guzzled the water, it dribbled down his chin.

“Fucking . . . give it here!”

Billy snatched back the flask. Tommy reached for his saddlebag, intending to repay him with one of the lollies, and didn’t notice the young trooper falling back along the line, until he slid into place at Tommy’s side. He was holding out his own water flask, offering it for Tommy to take.

“Get you good drink now, youngfella.”

Tommy watched him warily. The trooper nodded and offered the flask again. His face was glistening with sweat but he didn’t look so crazy, Tommy thought. No mad eyes or inane grin. He could hear the water sloshing in the flask. His left hand dropped the reins but Billy warned him, “Don’t you fucking take that.”

“I’m thirsty, Billy.”

“It’s black water. It ain’t clean.”

“Water’s water,” Tommy said. He took the trooper’s flask and drank. Billy began shouting at him, and Sullivan called for the trooper to leave the two brothers alone. At the head of the column, Noone twisted in his saddle to see.

Tommy handed back the flask, nodded in thanks.

“Rabbit,” the trooper whispered, tapping his chest. “Bye-bye.”

He moved on ahead, retook his place in the line.

“The hell’s he saying about rabbits?” Billy said. “I’ve not seen a bloody one.”

“Not rabbits—Rabbit. That’s his name.”

“What sort of a name’s Rabbit?”

“Ask him. I doubt he even knows himself.”

Billy put away his flask. “Well, you ain’t drinking no more of my water now your lips have been on his.”

Tommy left the lollies in the saddlebag, buckled up the strap.

The troopers saw the signs before any of the whites: a flurry of birds overhead, flocking for the east; a darkness creeping over the ranges, though there were hours until dusk. The party bunched to a standstill. They sat watching the land in the west. The horses twitched irritably, neighing and stepping about. Tommy stared at the horizon the same as the rest but saw no trouble at first. And yet. The ranges were dim and hazy, the air thickening, becoming opaque, a shadow slipping over the foothills like an early sunset fell.

The dust cloud swept over the ranges in an immense orange flood, engulfing them in a roiling, tumbling wall of dirt and sand and earth stretching a mile into the sky and many more wide, pluming upward and outward as it moved. And it was moving, quickly. To the naked eye it seemed almost motionless, like some terrible monolith newly raised from the ground, but anytime Tommy picked out a landmark it was consumed almost immediately, and lost.

“We have an hour,” Noone announced. “Pope—what do you say?”

The old man nodded. “Hour, Boss, that big bugger come.”

“Might only have dust in it,” Locke said. “We could ride right through.”

“Or it might not,” Noone replied. “Might be a sandstorm, blind the horses, strip the skin from your bones. You’re welcome to stay, Raymond. Please do. But the rest of you, back to that shit-pile of a house we found this afternoon.”

Locke began protesting but Noone didn’t wait. He turned his horse sharply, gave it both spurs; the horse bared its teeth and took off like it had been shot. Noone didn’t check who was following, though all of them did. Pushing their horses desperately, frantic backward glances as they rode. Tiny little figures on the darkening plain, the wall of earth behind them, its shadow lengthening, swallowing all before it, and gaining. Like the advance of the end of the world.





18



They huddled all together in the filthy little room, mouths and noses covered, eyes closed against the dust that gathered steadily upon them, coating their shoulders, their hats. Outside, the wind growled and swirled and strafed the building with stones, spattering like hail through the open window and collapsed section of roof, a cacophonous drumming overhead. Dust seeped through the walls. Grit shrapneled between the mismatched slabs and the men flinched and grunted when they were hit. Otherwise no one moved. They sat on the bare earth floor, heads bowed, cross-legged or with knees drawn, all facing the same way, their backs to the west and the brunt of the wind. Dark as night inside the house. A world of black and gray. No telling who was who. Tommy was beside his brother, he knew that much. They had entered the house together, then sat down side by side, their knees and shoulders touching—how long ago was that? How many minutes, hours, had passed? The storm seemed to come in cycles, and for a while Tommy expected each cycle to be the last, then he gave up expecting and simply sat. He worried about the horses, about Beau and Annie, tethered in their three-walled barn. Open to the east, mercifully, but with every lull in the wind he heard their petrified screaming and doubted whether the barn would hold. The house too: the roof was being stripped piece by piece, the shingles peeling and flipping away, the hole widening all the time. Tommy could see nothing through it, a strange and murky darkness, no hint of breaking light. He closed his eyes again, held himself tightly with both arms, leaned against his brother. After a moment, Billy leaned back.