LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

legs apart. His fingers tickle the handles of his shooters.

      “Turn and face me, bullet catcher!”

      But the bullet catcher just keeps on walking. Drops of sweat, big as marbles, develop on the scarred man’s forehead. He has to do something or he’ll look a fool. Jokes and murmurs roll through the small crowd.

      Pushing through the people, I duck into the alley and run down the side street, fast as I can, trying to catch up with the bullet catcher. I turn the corner of the last building as the shots ring out, two loud bangs that turn the air white. The bullets must be as big as cannonballs to make a noise like that. Fire into the air with those guns and you could make craters in the moon. I hit the ground. It’s instinct. Stray bullets are a problem in towns like Sand. You think there’s so much open space and so few people that the odds of getting hit by a stray bullet must be damn near impossible, but it seems to happen every day. I look up through the dirt, puffed up in a cloud around me from when I hit the ground, and watch the bullet catcher spin, his hands a blur. He moves so fast I think I may be imagining it, because a moment later he’s just walking off again on that same line out of town, like nothing in the world can break his stride. Picking myself up, I run out into the street. The man with scars on his cheeks lies on his back, like he’s making an angel in the dirt. His two shiny revolvers glitter at his sides. They won’t be there for long. As soon as the townsfolk get over the shock of seeing someone bend a bullet, they’ll descend on the fallen man like vultures, whether he’s dead or not.

      Ahead of me is the open desert, hot and merciless. Behind me is Sand. I don’t turn back; I don’t say goodbye. The bullet catcher carves a straight line through the desert, walking toward the distant mountains.

      And I follow.

       Episode 2

       The Ageless Man

      1.

      The Southland is a largely unmapped expanse of desert, pin-marked now and again by one- and two-horse towns, and very rarely the occasional market city, places where the spokes of trade routes converge. But Sand is miles from anywhere else, and I don’t know what lies to the south, if anything.

      At first, when Sand became nothing but a speck behind me—never more has its name seemed more fitting—I took to counting my steps. I counted for hours before I realized I was looking at my feet instead of at the bullet catcher. I thought for sure when I looked up he’d be long gone and that I’d be lost in no man’s land, where there is nothing but cacti and lizards that flick out their tongues like they’re telling jokes about you. But he was still there, a skinny black figure on the pan of the desert, shimmering in a way that was both magical and terrifying.

      I’ve been tracking the bullet catcher for three days and my water is gone. So is my food. I began by walking in the footsteps of the bullet catcher, matching his long strides, drinking when he drank, eating when he ate, sleeping when he slept. But, somehow, I never manage to gain any ground. Dmitri’s hat is my only shade. My skin is burned and cracked and dirty. I had planned on sneaking up on the bullet catcher the first night, after he’d fallen asleep near his campfire, but how could I when he seemed to sleep for only moments? And when, at the end of so many long, hot miles, my legs were so tired I collapsed as soon as he stopped? And when there was nothing to hide behind anyway? No rocks, no bushes, no hills.

      The wind picks up, a hot gust from the devil’s backside. The sand stings my skin like a million horseflies. The wind fills my eyes and nose and mouth with sand. I’ve stopped sweating, and it’s not getting any cooler—a bad sign. Next will be the light-headedness, then the hallucinations. Up ahead, the bullet catcher goes in and out of focus. And then he’s gone. I stop and blink dumbly at the spot on the horizon where he’d just been. But he doesn’t reappear. I look behind me, at my footsteps receding north. If I turn around, I’ll never make it back to town. Then the wind blows away my footsteps, like I’d never been there at all. And I realize, terribly, that I have no choice but to soldier on after the bullet catcher.

      By late evening, the bullet catcher has not reappeared, and his tracks are increasingly faint ahead of me. I’m going to die out here. I thought it would be more frightening, dying, but after so many days walking it’s a relief. It would be easy. I could just lie down, right here, and let the sand cover me like a blanket. But my legs, clumsy as they’ve become, keep stumbling forward on their own. I’m not frightened and I’m not sorry. Not even a little bit. Nikko and I share this fate, six years apart. We will both have died out here, under the big, wide-open sky. At this moment, I feel closer to him than I have in years.

      The sun finally sets. For about the length of two breaths, everything is perfect. The wind is cool, the sand doesn’t sting, the piercing blue sky turns dark and colorless. Then the temperature drops. Drops through the floor. It locks my knees and brings new pain to my sunburns. The cold splits my lips, and I lick them to get that little bit of moisture. I’m thinking about Nikko, thinking that soon I’ll lie down and fall asleep and when I wake he will be there with me, and then I stumble over something soft but firm and fall face first into the dirt.

      I roll over on my back, fairly certain I’m not dead. Everything hurts too much. My skin is fried, my mouth is full of sand, my legs and feet throb. The cold night air has one hand on my heart. Hell has to be less of an ordeal than this. But the view! The view in heaven can’t be any better. From heaven everything below must seem so small, so insignificant. How can that view be as beautiful as looking up at this dark, limitless dome? What is black at first reveals itself as velvet purple and blue, brilliant with the sharp light of a billion stars.

      When we were kids, before we went to live with the Brothers and Sisters, Nikko and I would stretch a sheet over our heads and poke it full of pinholes. Above the sheet, we’d hang candles. It was like sleeping under the real desert sky, only better, because it was warm and Nikko was there, and there were no snakes. When a bit of the colored candle wax dripped onto the sheet, it would expand slowly in a small violet or pink or blue circle.

      Nikko would point and say, “Look, those are stars exploding.”

      Tonight, as I gaze up, all but unable to move from the pain and cold, the sky looks much like those warm, safe nights of my childhood with my brother. It’s a million miles away in every sense, but it doesn’t matter. The feeling of my lips, splitting wide open again, tells me I’m smiling.

      I don’t feel the cold anymore, and at first I think it’s the memories warming my skin and bones, but then something clicks in my mind. It’s hypothermia. If I fall asleep now, I won’t wake. And because I know Nikko must have fought until his last breath, I roll onto my side and try to get to my feet. That’s when I see it, the thing I tripped over. A desert fox lies on its side. Its black eyes stare right into mine. Its tongue hangs from its crooked mouth. At first I think it’s dead, but then I see its stomach rising and falling. A large hunting knife sticks out of the ground by the fox. I grab the knife and pull myself up. There’s a word carved into the ground.

      Drink.

      I’ve heard travelers tell stories about the desert thirst, the horses and dogs whose blood they drank to walk just a few more miles, to make it just one more day. Heaving, I pull the knife free from the ground. I tumble onto my back. When I hold up the blade, the polished steel catches all the light of the moon and stars.

      I crawl toward the fox. It doesn’t move. Its breath quickens. The angle of its neck tells me it’s broken. I run my hand through its fur as if it were a dog and its breathing slows. It looks at me with knowing eyes. Then, tracing the line of its neck, I find the artery and make the cut. The blood slashes across my face. When I press my lips to the fox’s neck and drink, the blood is thick and warm and thaws me from the inside out. It’s gamy, like bad meat, but it’s good all the same, and I drink until the nausea is too much and my stomach lurches. When I look again, the fox stares through me, its eyes empty. I’m sorry and grateful.

      I sink to the ground. The blood doesn’t quench thirst like water. After drinking it I feel inches closer to death, but resolved to live. I’m the vampire girl. I crawl close to the fox and press myself against it. It’s still warm. That’s

Скачать книгу