The Collection

pavement had faded into dirt some yards back, and before them the dusty road narrowed as it passed between the wooden buildings. There was something threatening about the stillness of the street, about the silence and the utter lack of life. One block over, cars and trucks were driving by office buildings and fast food restaurants, but here on Death Row it was as if the modern world did not exist.

Except for them.

Lone Cloud got out of the pickup, tucking the .45 in his belt, the shotgun cradled in his hands. Full Moon followed his friend, holding the .22, ready to shoot anything that moved.

Lone Cloud cleared his throat. The sound was loud, jar­ring. 'Do you think they're hiding?' he asked.

Full Moon shrugged.

'You think we should look for them? Or should we wait for them to find us?'

Full Moon did not know, and he was about to shrug again, when he noticed a one-story building halfway down | the street on the left side, situated between a small hotel and what looked like a sheriff's office. The building stuck out, f protruding into the street, and its architectural style was rad­ically different from that of the surrounding structures.

He took a tentative step forward, sucking in his breath. A wave of cold washed over him as he looked at the building. It was their house, their old house, the one his father had built.

The one that had burned down after his father's death.

His father's murder.

How had the house burned down? Was it arson? A fire­place accident? A leaky gas line? He couldn't remember.

Had he ever known?

His gaze was drawn to the blackness within the open doorway. He could not remember the last time he had thought of their old home, but now that he considered it, everything about the situation seemed suspect. And the fact that he could remember no details, that his mind glossed over the specifics of that time, retaining only the broad brushstrokes of occurrence, worried him.

He walked toward the house, toward the open door, his hands gripping the rifle so tightly that his palms and fingers hurt. He heard Lone Cloud following behind him.

It is only you. You are the one.

There was something about Black Hawk's words that didn't sit well with him, that made him uneasy, though he hadn't really thought about it until now. The one? What did that mean? Was he the one chosen to kill these creatures? Or was he the one chosen as a sacrifice to them?

Had his father been sacrificed?

Full Moon stopped walking. He had never thought of that before, had never even considered that the tribe might be complicitous in the killings that had occurred on the Row. But it made sense. He had wondered at the time why the law had never been brought in to investigate, why there had never been any police or FBI or BIA or any sort of officials looking into the murder of his father, but when he'd asked his mother about it, she had told him to shut up, to not say anything, that there was nothing that could be done about Death Row.

He stared at the house, and he remembered how, after their home had burned down, they had been given a new one, a bigger one, one built especially for them by two of the tribe's contractors.

Given?

Since when had the tribe given houses away?

He turned toward Lone Cloud. 'After ...' He cleared his throat. 'After what happened to your father, you moved, didn't you?'

Lone Cloud nodded. 'They were tearing down our old house to build the gas station.'

'And they gave you a bigger house?'

Lone Cloud nodded, puzzled. 'Yes.'

'Payoff,' Full Moon said. 'They sacrificed our fathers and paid us off.'

Lone Cloud shook his head. 'What the fuck are you talk­ing about?'

'You don't see it?'

'See what?'

'Why did they let our fathers come here alone? Why didn't they get a posse together? They knew what the Row was like. They knew what happened here. Why didn't they come with our fathers? Or try to stop them?'

'What could they do?'

'Why did they let us come here? Why didn't they want us to bring guns?'

Lone Cloud blinked. He stared down the street. 'Black Hawk,' he said slowly.

Full Moon nodded.

'He was council leader when our fathers were killed.'

'And he was old even then.' Full Moon licked his lips. 'How long do you think he's been head of the council?'

'You know the tribe's history.'

'No, I don't. You tell me.'

Lone Cloud thought for a moment. 'I don't either,' he admitted.

'How old do you think he is?' Full Moon asked. Lone Cloud did not answer, and the only sound on the silent street was their overloud breathing. You are the one.

Damn right, Full Moon thought. He took a deep breath. 'Let's do it,' he said.

They strode forward. The fear was still there, but it had been shunted aside by anger, and Full Moon was grateful for that. He walked into the black doorway of the house his fa­ther built, Lone Cloud a step behind.

Only it wasn't the house his father built.

The outside was exactly the same, down to the chipped white paint on the right upper edge of the doorframe, but there was no coat closet entryway leading into the living room. There was only a long, narrow, black-floored, black-walled, black-ceilinged hallway that stretched forward to what looked like a blood-red room.

Where someone was screaming.

His father.

Full Moon ran down the hallway, not noticing if Lone Cloud was following him, not caring. He heard only the screams, and he remembered clearly, though he had forgot­ten it until now, how his father had screamed when they'd killed him, how the screams had continued long past the point when his father should have been dead, how he'd heard them clearly even as he drove away in the truck.

He reached the doorway at the end of the hall.

His father stood alone in the center of the windowless room, screaming. There were no pauses for breath, only one long continuous cry. He had heard that scream before, in the soundtrack to his nightmares, a hellish variation on the orig­inal death screams he had head on the Row.

His father was skinned and scalped, and though it had been years—decades—ago that it had occurred, the blood was still flowing, still fresh. It oozed from exposed muscu­lature, droplets forming into drops, drops into rivulets, the rivulets cascading down skinless flesh, puddling on the floor, dark crimson against the lighter rose.

'Father!' Full Moon cried.

His voice was lost amidst the screams, and the frozen muscles of his father's face did not even twitch as Full Moon yelled, the white staring eyes not budging from their focus on nothing.

Instinctively, without making a conscious decision to do so, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and shot his father in the face.

The screams died instantly as his father's head exploded, his skinned body falling in a heap. There was a jerking spasm, then a shifting and shrinking of the form on the floor as it compressed itself into a fetal position and began to melt, the now liquefied substance of his father soaking into the floor.

The walls and ceiling of the room darkened almost imperceptibly, and then the room was empty, the floor dry, and it was as if his father had never been there.

Full Moon was shaking, breathing heavily, the air harsh in his throat and lungs. He turned, but Lone Cloud was not behind him, and he hurried back down the hall toward the front of the building, reloading as he ran. He saw another red room off to his right, and he stopped, grabbing the door­frame.

He watched Lone Cloud shoot his screaming father in the face.