'You're lucky, Mr. Willard,' Palma said as she cleaned the worst wound, a gash in the wiry leg that might have been made by a cleaver. 'These tendons will repair themselves if you'll give them a chance. Where were you standing when the boar came at you?'
'Standin' hell, I was ten feet up a mesquite,' Willard said, his voice husky with exhaustion. 'I knowed that devil was takin' my lambs, I seen his tracks for a week now. But when I throwed down on him with the thirty-thirty he was in heavy brush. Gawd but he was big!'
'I didn't know they ate sheep,' Quantrill said.
'I didn't know they clumb trees,' said Willard, “but you can tell them peabrains at Aggie Station they've crossed a Russian boar with a sure-'nough squirrel.' It had not been a sow, he insisted. 'A boar with the devil's own corkscrew.'
Palma: 'Did you get him?'
Willard: 'Well, I
Mrs. Willard produced an old lever-action carbine, holding it by the tip of its short barrel. Its stock was splintered and gouged, with bright scars in the blued metal of the receiver. And the rank odor suggested that the boar had anointed the gun.
'I'm gettin' me an automatic scattergun,' Willard said, 'and them Aggie fruitcakes can pay for it.'
Quantrill typed Raima's instructions on a pocket printer as she finished dressing the leg; passed the copy to her. Palma repeated everything orally before yielding the copy to the taciturn Mrs. Willard, then paused outside the little house. 'If he tries to work, Mrs. Willard, it may fester, and you'll have to get him to town. Can you cope out here alone?'
The leathery face was placid. 'If need be. It's a visitation, Doctor. That boar's the devil's sign, just like the rest of the war. If I have to cope by sacrificin' lambs, so be it.'
Palma bit back an acid reply. 'You may be right about offering meat,' she said finally. 'Do you have poison?'
'For Ba'al? He'd get us, sure.'
Palma and Quantrill exchanged glances; said nothing. Jouncing back toward the highway, Quantrill could contain his opinion no longer. ' 'That poor old woman is plain gaga,' he said.
'She's probably younger than I am,' said Palma in jocose warning, 'and you'll hear lots stranger ideas. Religious fundamentalists tend to think of the war as a judgment. I must say,' she laughed gently, 'a bunch of Russian boars loose on the land makes a very likely-seeming link with the powers of darkness.'
'No more than paranthrax or fallout.'
'Hm. Maybe, but a boar has the devil's own face — speaking metaphorically, you understand! And the hooves, and — did you know that a big boar's penis is ridged as though it were threaded? Don't laugh, Ted; that's what Willard meant by the corkscrew. The same sort of thing that was once said of Satan.
'Stop looking at me that way, you fool, I don't believe a word of it. But when you can hang three or four coincidences together, you get — well, you get Ba'al. The Biblical false lord. I suppose it's logical, in Mrs. Willard's eyes, to sacrifice to whatever god makes his presence felt the most. And maybe it 'll keep that big devil away from the pens at night.'
Palma ignored Quantrill's lifted brow at her repetition of the word,'devil'. He persisted: 'Maybe Willard should've used a silver bullet.'
'Maybe — if that bullet were as big as your fist. You wouldn't expect to stop a Kodiak bear with a little thirty-thirty. Those animals that escaped from the Aggie pens were truly enormous; bigger by far than the Asiatic strain that reached over two hundred and fifty kilos; I've seen them. No, what Willard needed was an elephant gun and lots of intelli gence. I'm afraid guns are much more effective on humans than on game of equal size.'
Sandys jurnal Sept. 3 Tus.
Mom and me found a store on Delrio road today. It was oful. 2 men and 1 woman dead, looked like sombody shot up the place with a 22. All the licker was gone. We took cans of stuff. Cured ham, medisin, you name it me and mom got it. Mom says it wasnt swiping, I gess it isnt if you have to. When we got back I heard my dadyfrom outside. I never heard my dady like that. Mom made me stay out but I can work the c b and tried to call the dr. and coudnt. I felt so scared I was strong. I drug the stuff I found into my cave by the other hole, you know the one I call the side door. Mom says taking stuff from dead folks isnt swiping but I prayed God to forgive me.
Chapter Forty-Three
On Wednesday, Quantrill drove Palma to the Caverns of Sonora where, for the first time, he saw an effective relocation center. Laughing, chattering as though on a peacetime outing, hundreds of citizens exercised briefly on the surface, then returned below to be replaced by others. A few people labored to erect windmill towers, building a complex of twelve-volt lighting systems cannibalized from some of the many cars parked nearby.
Palma's requisition was quickly filled from the makeshift pharmacy near the cavern entrance. “In another week,' said Cathy Palma, leading Quantrill toward the surface by a winding stair, 'most of these people will be back home. Unless the SinoInds hit us again, or we get a duster.' A dust storm, she added, would sweep up settled fallout, would make topside breathing hazardous for a day or so even though most of the ionizing radiation had decayed to bearable levels.
Quantrill squinted in the sunlight, moved to their van. 'What was the stuff you picked up here?'
'Some drugs; opiates I'd hoped we wouldn't need, but the chelates didn't do the job.' She coded the display as Quantrill drove along blacktop. 'We've got another stop in the canyon a few klicks away. I told you about the Grange family; very tenacious in their ways, right or wrong. I'm afraid we're going to lose Wayland Grange, but he doesn't want the little girl to know that. So you keep her topside while I'm in their cave.'
Quantrill found his orders easy to follow. The cave entrance was well-hidden in a tributary arroyo, and he would not have seen it but for the staunch little blonde figure in the pink dress, waving as they drew near. 'Sandy, this is my helper. Why don't you show him the view,' Palma said, indicating the broken countryside.
The girl nodded, her eyes large, solemn with surprise. She was small for an eleven-year-old, almost stocky, with scabs on both knees. She had not yet lost her baby fat, but her arms and legs hinted that she would develop a milkmaid's sturdiness. The little face was that of a worried angel, cheeks pink as her cotton dress, growing pinker yet as Quantrill extended his hand. The memory of another little blonde girl surfaced for an instant, was thrust vigorously back into the recesses of his mind. Endless mourning had not been a feature of the Quantrill family.
'Didn't expect company,' she said, so softly he barely heard. She looked down at her feet, sockless in jogging shoes, as she offered her dirt-smeared hand.
Quantrill intuited her shyness in the handshake, resisted an impulse to hug the kid, realized he towered over her. He sat on a stone outcrop. 'I'm Ted. I've got a bad leg,' he said, 'so take it easy on me.'
It was the right tack. Soon she was guiding him by the hand, pointing to distant wreckage which had been winnowed for human remains, growing more animated as she showed him the places where she played outside. 'Do you still play, Ted?'
He grinned. 'When I get the chance, Sandy. But I'm no good at 'tag' right now. Give me another week.'
'It's a deal,' she chortled, then grew serious. “When my daddy gets well I'll show you the cave. What's the matter, don't you like caves?'
His face had betrayed him. 'Uh, sure. Just got a twinge from my leg. I saw the Caverns of Sonora this morning.'
Pride showed in Sandy's, 'Pooh, they're nothin'. My daddy and mom don't know how big ours is. But I do. If I had a real good friend, I might show her what I found. Or him,' faintly.
Charmed by her artless transparency, Quantrill hinted that he knew what she'd found, gradually leading her to guess that the backpack was his.
She caught her lower lip in her teeth, faltering, 'I didn't mean to swipe your knapsack, I mean,—'
