Dust Devils Read online

  Cody handed it to him and felt a pang of sadness at how clumsily the boy handled the .38. The kid no more knew guns than he knew how to fuck. If Willet tried anything on the devils, they’d take the gun and have him spitted within seconds.

  Willet stood up straight. Cody sucked in surprised breath. Even though they were seven or eight feet from the edge, the boy might well be visible from below. He grabbed the boy’s wrist, but Willet jerked away, said through gritted teeth, “I’m sick of talking. I’m doing what I came to do.” Willet crammed the gun down the front of his trousers.

  Cody controlled his voice with an effort. “You go down there now, you might get lucky and shoot one of them. Two at most.” He glanced at the .38, then back up at the kid. “Then what? The remaining ones’ll get you before you can blink.”

  “Then they’ll get me,” Willet shouted.

  Cody held up an imploring hand. “You need to keep—”

  “And I’ll say what I want,” Willet went on angrily. “I’m tired of hidin’ up here like a rabbit…”

  Voices below them, a commotion.

  “…while they feast on my granddaddy…”

  Price’s voice, commanding.

  “…the murdering bastards, I’m gonna show—”

  Cody leaped forward, clapped a hand over the kid’s mouth and slammed him to the floor of the ledge. “You stupid son of a bitch,” he hissed, but his voice was tremulous, plaintive. The fear paralysis was seeping back in. Willet was struggling beneath him, the small hands grabbing for the gun stuffed in his waistband. Cody remembered his own .32, left above on the ridge with his old horse. If only they could clamber up the rock wall, mount Sally and ride away…

  Price’s voice, echoing up the canyon and dangerously pleasant: “Hello, Misters Wilson and Black! Mr. Penders is on the way up to pay you a visit!”

  Chapter Three

  “Lemme go,” Willet said. The boy whimpered and bucked, but Cody held him down, too terrified to do otherwise. The idea of Penders, stark naked, with his immense barrel chest and tree-trunk thighs scaling the rock wall and discovering them, was enough to turn Cody’s legs to water.

  “Come on,” he said. The kid shouted something at him, but Cody was on his feet and breaking for the western edge of the plateau, where the outcropping ledge began snaking its way up the valley wall.

  “Up there,” a voice called out from below. “Up there, Horton. No, to the left!”

  Cody stepped onto the narrow ledge and began sidling his way up. He sensed Willet behind him, though he dared not glance back for fear of losing precious seconds. The rock exploded a couple feet in front of him and he knew they’d been spotted, the bastards taking target practice from the basin below. He could make out the devils’ glimmering forms as they swam in the firelight.

  Cody climbed toward the shadows of the cliffside, through them. He chanced a look back and saw that Willet was right behind him. Popping sounds from below, more dust and rock shattered around them. If it weren’t so damned dark up here, they’d be dead already.

  Cody glanced up. Halfway there, he saw. With a dull ping, the craggy rock wall splintered a foot to his right, and he felt something bite his forearm. He hoped it was a fragment of rock and not a bullet. Out here in the wilds an infection could kill a man, and though he knew it was folly to worry about such matters now, he could not help remembering that hog with the gangrenous wound, the rancid-cheese smell it put out.

  Willet moaned and Cody turned to see him windmilling his arms, his balance going. Worried he’d fall himself, Cody shot out a hand and clutched the boy by the shoulder. For a moment Cody felt weightless and was sure they’d both plummet to the valley floor, save the devils the trouble of killing them. Then Willet leaned forward, hugging the rock wall. Cody did the same. He heard laughter and looked down. Two of them were taking aim, Price and one of the Seneslav twins. Above the gunmen, Penders was climbing slowly upward, his mouth fixed in a grim line. Cody glimpsed the other Seneslav disappearing around the corner of a rock formation. That left Horton, the youngest, the one who had screwed Angela right in her and Cody’s marriage bed. It was the memory of Horton’s arrogant face that got Cody moving.

  A couple more shots sounded as they neared the place where the ledge curved and—Cody hoped—the outcropping delivered them to safety. Penders had narrowed the distance between them, but if they kept moving, they would beat him easily. The idea of Horton lurking somewhere in the shadows troubled him, but there was nothing he could do about it now. They had to keep moving.

  Another shot sounded and Willet cried out. Cody’s stomach sank. He looked back and saw the kid’s face frozen in a rictus of agony. He had no idea where Willet had been hit, but if they remained here frozen, they’d surely die.

  “Come on,” he said and tapped the kid on the head. Willet blinked and looked at him like they’d never met before. Then, wincing, he did as he was told.

  Cody was turning away—he saw the ledge did indeed lead to the crest of the wall; God, almost there—when the kid cried out again. This time it was fear rather than pain in Willet’s voice. Cody glanced down and beheld what had caused the fear.

  Penders was nearly even with them. The huge man’s agility was astonishing. With his close-cropped black beard and his powerful naked body, Penders resembled some great warrior from Greek myth. Or some monster. Somehow he’d threaded his way up the rock wall, and now it looked as though he’d meet them at the crest. And then what?

  Cody glanced back at Willet. “Give me the gun.”

  The kid’s face was a dazed mixture of bewilderment and anguish, and dammit, they didn’t have time for either. Cody reached down, yanked the .38 out of Willet’s pants.

  He barely heard the kid’s protests as he leveled the gun at Penders, who was climbing toward them at a delirious angle, a knife clamped in his teeth. Another moment or two and the huge man would have them. Cody aimed. Penders plucked the knife from his teeth and slashed at Cody’s legs. Simultaneously pain flared in his calf and he pulled the trigger. He had no idea where he hit Penders, but the huge man bellowed and fell away from the rock wall. Baring his teeth through the sting in his leg, Cody watched the man’s ox-like body tumble end over end into darkness.

  As Cody’s eyes came into focus, so did the pain. He imagined a sinister gnome down there, flaying his calf like the walleyes he and his daddy used to catch. The muscle would be pink, the denuded bone a glistening ivory. A nauseating haze of dizziness grayed his vision, nearly drove him to his knees, though he knew there wasn’t enough room to kneel.

  A hand on his shoulder. Shaking, entreating.

  Cody knew they were still in peril, perhaps more than ever. Willet was hollering at him in his high, insistent voice, Get moving, get moving. Cody’s eyes happened on the valley below, and he saw that the other twin was gone.

  But Price remained.

  The tall man stood there gazing up at him, unaccountably meeting his eyes through the murk and the distance. Adam Price stared at Cody and through him. Cody stared back, hating Price with every fiber of his being. The firelight flickered over the man’s penetrating dark eyes, the wavy brown hair spilling in thick locks over the man’s shoulders, the chiseled torso speckled with drying blood, the rippled belly—full of Willet’s family—rising and falling in agitation. Beside Price lay Penders’s huge, unmoving body.

  Cody hugged the valley wall. They were close to escaping, terribly close, but the sizzling pain in his calf made movement impossible, sucked his will.

  Then he remembered Angela, her stomach shoveled out and her pale ribs pointing heavenward. He jolted forward.

  They made the crest and stumbled onto level ground. He expected any moment to be dragged down by Horton, by one of the Seneslav twins, but so far no one appeared to be pursuing them.

  “Where’s your horse?” Willet asked. Rather than answering him, Cody set off in the direction he hoped was correct. Who could tell out here in the wilderness where everything looked the same? He’d
gone a good twenty paces before he remembered how much his calf hurt, but once aware of it there was no forgetting it. He limped on as best he could, but that side of his body felt weighted down, moored to the ground like a trout line affixed to a sludgy river bottom.

  A strident cry broke the silence and Cody realized it was Sally, dear old Sally. Something had spooked her. He’d chosen the right direction after all—the cry came from straight ahead—but what if Horton or the twins were already there? What if they were torturing the old girl, feasting on her?

  They busted through a willowy tangle of deer grass and into the clearing where he’d left Sally. The gaunt old horse was still there, tied to a bigtooth maple, but she was not alone.

  Horton leaned back in the saddle, the cigarette between his lips sending up a ghostly ribbon of smoke. He looked as though he was just passing the time, his unlined face eerily serene. The man should have been absurd atop the horse, naked as the day he was born, but instead Horton seemed perfectly at home that way, as if he were a centaur who’d just paused to have a smoke and appreciate the beauty of the night. Horton held the reins with one hand and carried a pistol in the other. Cody noted without surprise the gun Horton held was Cody’s own.

  Horton looked beyond Cody as though he weren’t even there. To Willet, he said, “You with that Black clan?”

  Willet looked as though he was about to cry. Cody glanced at the bulging gun butt in the front of the boy’s shirt and wondered if he could grab it and get off a shot before Horton cut him down. Either way it had to happen quick. The Seneslav twins would be here soon.

  “You favor your mother, boy,” Horton said, his sardonic face grinning wickedly. “I doubt you got a pussy like hers though.” Horton took a long drag on the cigarette and let the smoke release slowly from his nostrils. “That snatch was so sweet, I felt like I was fuckin’ some high-dollar whore.”

  “Don’t say that,” the boy warned. Cody noted with surprise that Willet had drawn his Smith & Wesson.

  Horton noticed it too, yet his face remained dangerously serene. He nudged the brim of his porkpie hat higher as if to be sure he was seeing the boy clearly. “You have that thing last night kid? You did, you should be ashamed.” Horton chuckled. “What’d you do, watch us slaughter your family?”

  The way Willet’s face crumpled, that was exactly what he’d done. Cody wanted to hug the boy. At least Cody wasn’t the only one to turn to stone when faced with unfathomable horror. At least he wasn’t the only—

  A blast sounded behind Cody, and as he dropped to his knees he saw Horton’s face disappear in a messy crimson spray. The man described a half-turn, and as Sally reared up, Horton tumbled off. Already dead, the naked man landed in a puff of dust.

  Sally was frantic, her eyes impossibly white, her lean neck muscles straining against the rope that bound her. Cody hurried forward and spoke as soothingly as he could, but the mare seemed unaware of all save the dead man lying underfoot. She trampled Horton’s motionless body, punched holes in his flesh, and try as Cody might to seize the reins, Sally remained perpetually beyond his grasp. Desperately, he leaped forward and looped an arm over Sally’s neck, and though she still flailed about, she seemed to notice him for the first time. “Calm down,” he told her. “Shhhh… Calm down, girl.” Her neighs quieted down, her trembling body reassured by Cody’s touch.

  He grasped the reins and called for Willet to hop on. When no response came, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that the boy was still standing where he’d been, the gun dangling limply at his side. Willet gaped at Horton’s ruined body like it was a vase he’d accidentally shattered. Cody knew he should say something to buoy the kid’s spirits, but they didn’t have time for such counsel.

  “Get your ass over here,” was what he did say, and it proved enough. Willet was beside him in seconds.

  The reins still in his right hand—Cody didn’t trust the animal not to bolt—he used his left to untie Sally from the maple. Mounting her, he made the mistake of leading with his good leg, for when he pushed off with his injured calf he nearly swooned from the pain. Head spinning, he leaned against Sally until the nausea passed. Then he moved around Sally, threw his useless right leg onto the horse and shoved with his good one. Without pause he offered Willet a hand, and the boy used it to clamber up behind him.

  Sally didn’t need goading. She set off at a pace too brisk, and only providence kept Cody from tumbling off and taking Willet with him. He felt the boy’s arms slide around his waist and fought off a memory of Angela doing the same. She was dead, goddammit, and there was nothing anyone could do about it, least of all him.

  Behind him the boy tensed, and before Cody could tell the kid to calm down, a pale figure emerged from the darkness. It was one of the twins, his wraithlike body appearing from the left and dashing toward the trail ahead of them. He clearly meant to head them off.

  Cody shouted at Sally to go faster, faster. She seemed to absorb his fever, but he compelled the old mare forward with merciless vigor. Her aged hooves pounded the trail harder and harder, and just when Cody thought they’d bested the twin, the pale body leaped at them, and then Willet was screaming, his arms having slipped away from Cody’s waist. Cody made a desperate grab behind him, but it was too late.

  Willet was gone.

  Chapter Four

  Cody threw a backward glance and glimpsed the struggling pair, Willet looking very much like a field mouse in a hawk’s clutches. Cody’s first impulse was to gallop on, a dreadful place deep within him glad it was Willet and not him back there being mauled. Then a wave of self-loathing stronger than any he had yet experienced washed over him. He knew he couldn’t leave the kid. With a sense of fatalistic doom, Cody reared back, and heedless of Sally’s protests, they pounded back the way they’d come.

  For the first time he remembered leaving his .32 on the ground beside Horton’s corpse. Why hadn’t he retrieved it?

  Because you were scared shitless. What the hell does it matter now?

  It didn’t. In the moonglow he saw Seneslav raise a huge knife, and though a thick stand of sage stood between him and the struggling pair, Cody rode straight for them. One of the mare’s forelegs got snagged in the scrub brush. Sally half stumbled and nearly pitched him off. As the twin looked up, Cody launched himself off the horse and for a moment feared he’d overshot his mark. Then he slammed the naked man square, Cody’s shoulder snapping Seneslav’s neck back. The knife skittered into the brush.

  Cody was dazed, but he could tell by the way Seneslav was groaning he’d done some damage. Cody scrabbled about for some weapon, preferably the knife, but when his hand happened on a jagged shard of slate, he seized it and swung. The point embedded in the man’s side, but the rest crumbled upon impact. Worse, the stabbing seemed to rouse the twin, rally his senses. The man’s face curled into a feral grin, his square jaw flexing. Seneslav swung a haymaker that narrowly missed Cody’s face. Where was Willet? By Christ, the boy had a gun, and now was the time to use it.

  Seneslav swung again and this time grazed Cody’s shoulder. The blow knocked him off-balance, but before he went down Seneslav punched him in the small of the back. Pain spiraled through his midsection. Cody endeavored to put some space between them but was dealt the indignity of Seneslav grabbing the rear of his pants and hauling him back by the belt.

  The stronger man whipped him to the ground. In the moment just after Cody hit, a desperate idea materialized. As the twin approached, his hands extended like some mindless ghoul, Cody undid his belt, yanked it off and swung it at Seneslav’s leering face. The solid steel buckle opened the man’s cheek. Seneslav uttered a cry of disbelief as a torrent of blood spilled down his neck. But quicker than Cody would’ve thought possible, Seneslav’s bare foot shot out, caught Cody under the jaw. Cody stumbled back, landed in a nasty tangle of brush. He turned his face, intending to extricate himself from the branches holding him captive, and as he did he perceived the little blue flowers all around him, the kind his dad used to
place on his mother’s grave. Dazed, Cody looked up and saw Seneslav advancing. Cody balled a fist, prepared to strike, but when the twin’s eyes lighted on Cody’s cocked arm—then something beyond it—he retreated.

  As the twin backpedaled, his eyes rolled in unreasoning panic. Cody pushed to his feet and kicked the man as hard as he could in the belly. Seneslav’s head whipped forward, the blood from his flayed cheek spattering over Cody’s arm.

  The warm feel of it incited him. Cody kicked again, this time thumping the man in the groin. As Seneslav doubled over, Cody swung a knee into his throat. Coughing, the pale twin landed on all fours.

  Cody was about to wrap the belt around the twin’s neck when something glinted to Cody’s left.

  Seneslav’s knife.

  Cody went for the knife, got hold of it, but Seneslav was already groping for him. With a cry Cody lashed out with the knife and watched it slice through Seneslav’s larynx.

  The twin clasped his wound, but the knife had been so sharp and the force of the stroke so great that the blood spurted around Seneslav’s fingers, the man’s life force spraying out in all directions.

  Cody expected the twin to finally fall then, and for a moment it looked as if he would. The gurgling noises issuing from Seneslav’s gaping mouth, coupled with the dead glaze that was seeping into his eyes, gave Cody a grim satisfaction. The son of a bitch was tougher than hell, tougher than any man Cody had ever seen, but he was still—

  Seneslav lunged for him.

  He knocked Cody backward, both men tumbling into the dust. The flow of blood pumping out of Seneslav’s gaping neck wound covered them both, drove Cody into a state formed half of terror, half of bleak determination. As Seneslav groped for him again, Cody rolled away and noted as he gained his feet how sluggish the twin had grown. He didn’t allow himself to linger on this thought. He’d underestimated Seneslav once, but he wouldn’t do it again. Grimly, deliberately, Cody circled his bloodied adversary until he was directly behind him. Then he looped the belt under Seneslav’s chin and reared back. The belt caught in the slick notch of Seneslav’s wound, and when Cody redoubled the pressure on it, the tough leather belt ripped deeper into the meat of the man’s throat.