beavers began building dams and lodges in the tributaries of the Rhone River. Building dams and lodges is a very complex, communal effort…yet, no one had to teach the beavers how to do it, they knew. And those dams in the Rhone were perfectly identical to those built by American and Canadian beavers. Cultural instinct at work.
“And our friends out there, Louis. Nobody has to teach them what their ancestors knew. It’s race memory. They know how to survive. How to kill, how to make weapons, how to dress a carcass and peel a hide. Cultural instinct.”
While Earl was gone, Louis found Mike Soderberg’s gun cabinet. He broke the glass with his hammer and sorted around in the moonlight. He wasn’t much of a shooter himself, so he grabbed a weapon that he was familiar with: A bolt-action Winchester Featherweight. 30-06. His father had had one. He’d shot it plenty of times as a boy. He loaded the magazine with Springfield cartridges, stuffed more in his pockets.
“We better get the hell out of here, Earl,” he said when the older man came back.
“Where to?”
“Just out of here for now.”
They stepped out on the porch together. The streets were quiet. But right away Louis got a bad feeling in his stomach and it did not answer to such trifling things as reason or logic. This was an ancient sense. A sense of impending doom.
“I don’t think we’re alone out here,” Earl said.
Something moved in the hedges and Louis did not even hesitate: he brought up the rifle, worked the bolt, and fired. There was nothing but the echo of his shot. No movement.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Holding the rifle high, he led Earl away out to the sidewalk. He knew it wasn’t safe to stay in the house and it was no more safe out here. They were near and he could smell them: the stink of oily hides and wet dogs. Something moved across the street. Louis hesitated. Something moved behind a parked car. He fired, taking out the windshield. Earl turned to him, mouth opened to say something…but then he grunted and stumbled forward. There was a sharpened spear shaft jutting from his lower back. Blood filled his mouth and he made a gurgling sound and went to his knees.
Louis fired a shot.
He heard a whooshing sound.
He turned, made ready to fire again and his head exploded with stars. The rifle fell from his hands. When he opened his eyes he was flat on his back on the sidewalk. He could hear Earl gasping. But he paid no attention to that. Because somebody was standing over him. They smelled of urine, meat, and shit.
At first he thought it was a monster. Some horrible, walking cadaver that had forced its way out of a muddy grave. But it wasn’t that. It was a woman…or something like one with huge breasts and an axe in her hands. Her flesh was clotted, lumpy, white as bone, glistening. That’s when he knew that she had covered herself in slimy white clay or maybe ash. She had coated herself with it and slicked back her hair, giving her the appearance of a bloodless wraith. Bright red diagonal bands at the mouth and eyes contrasted this. He could see the yellow of her teeth which had been filed sharp, the shining orbs of her eyes. She wore a necklace of fur which he soon realized were maybe a dozen human scalps sewn into a garment.
The stench of her.
The absolute obscenity.
He tried to move, but his head was spinning. Two other women-younger, thinner, breasts like small cones- stepped out of the gloom. They were smeared with ghostly white ash, too. One carried a sling which had propelled the rock into Louis’ head. The other stepped over to Earl, planted her foot in the center of his back and yanked out the spear. Earl screamed and she stabbed him three times in the throat.
I’m next…they’re gonna kill me next.
This is what Louis thought as he hovered at the edge of unconsciousness. They gathered around him for the killing. The older woman crouched down by him, running her hands over him. When one of the younger girls groped at his crotch, she slapped her hand away and hissed at her like a snake.
“Mine,” she said. “Mine…”
73
The Baron was scalping his prey.
The body of a man was facedown in the grass. The Baron-or Mr. Chalmers as he had once been known-was kneeling on his shoulders. He pressed the lethal, razored edge of his K-Bar knife just behind the man’s left ear and slit along the back of his skull, above the right ear and along the forehead/scalp line and back to his original incision. Then he peeled the scalp free from the skull with no little exertion, holding it up for all to see.
The pack howled like animals.
They screeched.
They bayed at the moon high above.
The Baron wiped his bloody fingers on his sleeveless fox coat, then he tossed the scalp to the pack. They fought wildly over it. And as they did so, the Baron cut off the man’s ears and then, punching holes in the cartilage with the tip of his knife, threaded them onto his necklace.
He had six sets on there thus far.
He told them he would fill the necklace by morning and the greatest hunter among them would be awarded the necklace of ears as a symbol of their stealth and ferocity. For amongst the pack, these were the things admired the most.
A pair of young boys came running back into the yard. The Baron had sent them scouting for new prey. They were breathless, filthy things who wore only pants and both carried long-bladed hunting knifes on makeshift slings around their necks. The Baron heard them out, his black-striped face grim, impassive. It would be his decision.
“Lead us,” he told them.
The pack howled in honor of the blood sport to come. Then, maintaining the pack discipline that the Baron had told them was so very important, they quieted down and there was only the sound of a summer night. Crickets. A light breeze in the high boughs of the oaks. And in the distance, the screams and war cries of other packs as they raided from neighborhood to neighborhood.
The Baron’s pack moved out in single file with flank guards to either side and the two boys taking point far ahead. Soon there would be scalps for all…
74
The girl was broken.
The ritual began.
The Huntress watched the clan seize the girl, take hold of her and drag her from the shadows where she cowered. She did not fight at first. She was becoming of the clan, but she still acted stupid and helpless like prey. Her brain was not yet the brain of a hunter.
But soon.
Soon she would hunt with them.
The Huntress was certain of it. Because just as she could smell fear or the telltale scent trail of other hunters, she could smell what was going on inside the girl. The more like them the girl became, the more her blood ran hot and bright.
At my side. When you have proven yourself, you will hunt at my side.
Then she could wear the paint of the skull, but not before. Only the ones the Huntress selected were given this privilege. Her inner circle.
The men wanted to have the girl, of course. Many of them. They could smell her ripeness and hers was a fruit they wished to pluck so very sweet and juicy was it. But she had been broken by the one the Huntress chose. That
