“Salty,” Renzi said. He spat out the taste of it. “Not as much as sea water. But there’s salt.”
“That’s good,” Dwayne said. “That means we probably won’t run into anything coming down to take a drink.”
“Ain’t concerned with what comes down to the water,” Chaz said. “But what might come out of it is a different story. We should have brought the Renzi kid’s picture book with us.”
Renzi jogged out of the water and back to the sand.
The narrow beach ran along a rock face and curved to the west around to a flinty point that jutted out into the water. The jagged point of land was backlit by a yellow glow in the deepening gloom. Behind those rocks was a massive fire of some kind. It threw light far out onto the water creating golden highlights atop the wavelets.
“Here’s where they came out,” Jimbo said. A double row of drag marks and lots of footprints led along the tree line toward the light of the fire. It was plain enough sign for any of them to recognize.
“Single file,” Dwayne said. “Chaz, you’re walkin’ drag. Jimbo, on point.”
It was full-on dark when they reached the rocky outcropping. A glow rose from the other side of the collection of craggy, volcanic boulders. The campfire. A big one or more than one. Thick white smoke was carried by the wind off the water and into the boughs of the pines on the ridgeline above them.
To get around the rocky formation, they waded into the warm water. One hand to the wall to steady them and one hand training their weapons forward as they moved. Dwayne took the lead. The first turn brought them onto a new strip of beach nestled in a cleft in the formation. What looked like single ridge was a series of natural jetties of volcanic rock running out into the water. They all had experience in this kind of country. The ridges were what was left by flows of lava from an eruption sometime in the past. They spread like fingers into the water. As Dwayne rounded the first jetty of black rock and stepped out of the water. He found himself ten feet from a man squatting in the sand to take a dump.
For an instant, they stared at one another. The man was five feet in height, with broad shoulders and a thick neck almost as broad across as his head, thin legs and callous-covered feet. His upper body was corded muscle, and he was covered with filth that hid the true color of his skin. His dark matted hair hung in his face and down to his shoulders. There were shells and yellow stones braided into his hair in strands, and he wore a necklace with similar decorations. His features were broad and flat, and his mouth opened in surprise to reveal blackened teeth filed to points. He wore no clothing except a hide belt about his narrow hips from which hung an “L” shaped bit of carved bone secured by a loop of twine. There was a spear with a six-foot haft stuck point first in the sand by him.
The man locked eyes with Dwayne—huge yellowish eyes. He dropped a sudden stream of greasy shit between his feet and grabbed for his spear with an animal growl.
Dwayne rushed three strides and drove the butt of his rifle between the man’s eyes. The blow lifted the lighter man off his bare feet. He fell to a motionless heap without a cry and into his own pile of stinking feces.
The others closed around to look at the thing lying in the sand. Dwayne’s blow had crushed the skull in the front. The black, broad set eyes stared up at nothing. Dwayne trained his weapon up the beach, but there was no movement. There was a second ridge of rock separating this section of sand from the next part of the beach. The source of the glow was still out of sight behind the natural jetty.
“Is he an Indian or what?” Renzi said.
“No Indian ever looked like that,” Jimbo said. “His nose is too flat. And the ears are small and low on the skull. And the eyes. Those are bigger than any human I’ve ever seen. They’re like animal eyes.”
“Maybe he’s an ugly Indian,” Renzi said. He wrinkled his nose and touched a boot toe to the leg of the corpse.
“Maybe he’s not human,” Chaz said. “At least, not as human as us. Look at those teeth.”
The slack mouth of the dead man revealed rows of long teeth coming to a point at the end. They were broad and stained dark, and there were just too damned many of them. The jawline protruded to contain them. The nose was wide, with thin nostrils that were more like slits.
“Whoever they are, they’re human enough to have set out a picket,” Dwayne said. “If Stinky here didn’t have the trots, it’d be me lying there with a spear in my belly.”
Jimbo crouched farther up the beach. “Trail picks up here.”
They moved at a trot toward the next ridge of rocks. A sandy trail led up to a saddle in the formation. Embers rose high into the air from the light source behind it. The smell of wood smoke stung their nostrils. They were close.
Dwayne signaled to the others with a hand flat and level to the ground. They dropped to their knees and crawled across the broad sand trail to take up positions in the porous rocks. The rocks would hide them. Anyone near that fire would have lost their night vision for sure. Chaz was by Dwayne as they crept through the dead
