Something was nagging at him like a thorn in his mind. Something he had forgotten or missed. Something important. He forced himself to ignore the growing horde of Links, which were beginning to resemble a mosh pit at a rock concert as they clamored to reach their screaming prey. He stopped running and stole a quick glance around the area. His eyes happened across the small red crater Muddy's spear tip had left.
Might not be a bad idea to have a secret weapon up my sleeve, just in case. Just in case.
He snatched the spear tip out of the snow, wincing at the grimy feel of it as his fingers slid across the carved stone. He stuffed it down the front of his clothing "armor", letting it tumble and slide down before coming to a secure resting place just under his right nipple. The cold relief he felt as it touched his baking skin was indescribable.
They had Muddy on the ground now and were dog piling onto him. That was all Emmit cared to see before darting away to catch up with Poke. He bobbed and weaved like a boxer under outstretched arms and wagging fingers, carefully following the trail they had made and threading between the stoic trees. Poke was damned fast; Emmit hadn't spent more than a minute retrieving his new weapon but Poke was nowhere to be found, other than a few drops of blood that had fallen from his spear. Once again, he was on his own.
Muddy's shrieks carried farther than Emmit could have ever imagined, following his retreat all the way back to the shabby little cabin. But it wasn't the screams that would stick with him, he thought, nausea sloshing around in the pit of his stomach like bad medicine. It was the way the screams had changed after Muddy had suffered long enough, winding down like a tornado siren as whatever black sickness the Links carried in their touch took him over. The screams became less frantic, less shrill. Less urgent, somehow. Then they rose into titters of drunken, maniacal laughter.
Chapter 8: Marked
Roy's team hadn't made it back yet. Emmit left his blood clotted club outside and let himself into the cabin, his feet tugging against his legs like lead weights and his body screaming with the stiff, swollen bite of pulled muscles. He slid his fingers under his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, which were dry and painfully itchy. It felt like the more he rubbed at them, the itchier they got. When they began to burn and water, he made himself stop.
Poke was hunched down in front of the fireplace like a dirty, bony gargoyle. He had removed all his clothing except for a pair of baggy blue sweatpants and was busy loading chopped firewood into the fireplace. The fire crackled and popped as it began to grow, hungrily eating the dry lumber and filling every sunken hollow between Poke's ribs with wavering shadows. Emmit had been right about him; the rest of his body was tattooed here and there, giving his narrow back the appearance of a crudely drawn roadmap with bad doodles in the margins. One tattoo stood out from the others, however, and it became clear to Emmit why Poke and a black man like the Reverend might not get along. Between his shoulder blades was a sloppily tattooed flag with a Nazi swastika on it, and the words "white power" under it in spidery letters.
Jesus, this guy just gets worse and worse.
Poke looked over his shoulder only briefly, and the firelight made him look even fouler. His face looked like it had somehow been deformed by the rotten ugliness inside him, like pus distending a pimple to the bursting point. He cocked his thumb at the door Emmit had just come through.
"Behind the cabin, there's a couple hollowed out logs. Fill 'em with snow and bring 'em in, right here by the fire. All of them. We need water to drink, and a bucket bath is the closest thing to a shower we get."
Emmit began to peel off a few layers of his stitched “armor”, letting his sodden pants and shirts plop to the floor beside his sleeping pile. He didn't move.
Poke's hand stopped halfway to the fireplace, still clutching the small stump of a branch. He turned again, slowly, exaggerating his annoyance.
"You deaf, Papa?"
"No, I heard you just fine," Emmit said, this time slamming a musty long-sleeved shirt that said "World Champion Beer Drinker" to the floor. "I just don't take orders from racists. Or murderers."
Poke laughed, a single blat of air that sounded like a dry fart. He tossed the wood into the fire with a little extra force, sending a shimmering vortex of glowing embers spiraling up into the chimney. He stood, crossing each arm over his chest and pulling on his elbows to stretch his small, hard pectoral muscles.
"Oh, you don't huh? The fuck do you think Roy is? What the fuck do you think Muddy was?"
Emmit clenched his fists until the nails dug into his skin, hard enough to sting, and his knuckles felt like they could split the skin around the bone just from sheer pressure. Was. How easily Poke could change from present tense to past tense, scarcely minutes after Muddy had been killed in front of them. Emmit hadn't known the man very well, and he knew Poke wasn't wrong— Muddy had told him with his own mouth that he had killed innocent people, though it hadn't been intentional. He had felt himself growing to like Muddy regardless, both out of sympathy for him and because he had brought a carefree, happy-go-lucky air to the solemn rigidity of the camp. And now he was gone.
Muddy had lived a turbulent life and then had been made to die a bad death— a death that may have been inevitable,
