He nodded. 'Sure, I guess.'
'Great!' she smiled and pecked him on the cheek. 'At least now it's out in the open. We don't have to kid each other.'
Tag turned to say something to her, he wasn't sure what exactly, just something nice. He hoped the words would, for once, spring naturally and unarmored from his mouth. 'I-'
He heard a funny sound. A zipper closing too fast. Where had he heard that sound before? There was a nudge at his chest, the distant sound of screaming. Season's.
'Jesus God, no!'
Lazily he followed her eyes to his chest, saw the green stick of wood, the yellow feathers bunched like a bouquet at one end. The shaft was wedged into his chest. How'd that get there? he wondered, started to reach for it to pluck it out. But his arms wouldn't move. His hand uncurled from the bow, it dropped on his foot. He didn't feel it. Slowly, so slowly, he felt his legs melting under him.
Like a vivid dream, it all seemed to take hours to Tag. But for Season, from the time she saw him hit to the time he dropped to the ground was a matter of a second or two.
She'd screamed from shock, but had recovered quickly, dropping to one knee and firing off an arrow in the direction the crossbow bolt had come from. The arrow rustled through the brush, but didn't hit anything solid. She flipped another arrow from quiver to bow and drew. The bow's system of pulleys allowed her to keep it drawn without arm fatigue as she swept it in a fanning motion from brush to brush.
Zzziipp.
Another bolt sizzled by her, embedded itself in Tag's exposed back. She pivoted in the direction it had come from, fired her arrow. It too was swallowed by the brush. She reached for another arrow.
Zzziipp.
The bolt's razor-edged tip punctured her right forearm, slicing through flesh and muscle like a ship's prow through water. Instantly it poked through the back of her forearm dripping blood onto her fine wheat-colored hairs.
Zzziipp.
Zzziipp.
Two more bolts flashed toward her, one whooshing over her right shoulder, the other chipping a splinter from her bow before being deflected to the ground.
Unable to either see the enemy or fire her bow with her injured arm, Season dropped the bow and did what her body was trained to do best. She ran.
Eric gave the cap of the canteen an extra twist. 'That about does it. Again, thanks for the help.'
Joseph Baldwin smiled, shook Eric's hand. 'No problem. It's the least I could do after bending all your ears so much. Hope you find whoever you're tracking.'
Eric's face hardened.
'No, don't worry, none of you let anything slip. You forget, I was a lawyer. Had a stint as a public defender for a couple years. I know the look.' He gave them a grim smile. 'But from judging the kind of people you seem to be, I'd say whoever it is has it coming.'
'Thanks for the water,' Eric said again, nodding to the others to move out,
'Jesus God, no!' Season's scream cracked the air like a gunshot.
Eric led them as they scrambled up the sandy incline. They ran clumsily through the shifting sand, their feet slogging as if buried in mud. Only Eric seemed to move easily, his feet slapping ahead of the others as if he were on pavement. His crossbow was cocked, the bolt snug against the string, waiting for that 150 pounds of tension to snap it through the air.
Season was running toward him now, her legs and arms pumping, fighting the sand's pull as it sucked at her feet. The bloody arrow through her forearm looked like some child's prank, a toy bought at a cheap magic shop to scare her parents. Once it banged against her thigh as she ran. Her howl of pain was sudden, reflexive. Then she gulped it back and ran even harder.
'Drop to the ground!' Eric yelled. 'Drop!'
She shook her head as she ran toward him. Another bolt flew out from the clump of brush behind her, whizzed within a few inches of her back before shooting past her.
Eric flopped to his stomach, lifted the crossbow to his shoulder, and calculated the backward trajectory of the bolt that had just missed Season. It was like playing the film of the arrow's flight in reverse. Then he freeze- framed the film on the exact spot where the bolt had emerged from the brush, aimed the crossbow, and squeezed the trigger.
The short arrow spat from the bow like an angry torpedo headed for an enemy U-boat.
A surprised grunt of sudden unendurable agony burst from the brush, followed by a body in combat fatigues pitching forward, grasping madly at the bolt blooming like a deadly flower from his stomach. But the shaft was too slippery with blood for him to get a firm grasp. His fingers slid helplessly off the arrow. Then he died.
Twelve yards to the left, young Foxworth swallowed a bubble of panic as he watched Toomey's eyes stare unblinking into the orange sky. Tiny grains of sand coated Toomey's bloody fingers like breading and Foxworth suddenly thought of Kentucky Fried Chicken, the one thing he missed most since the quakes. He wanted to laugh, to cry, to vomit, to piss his pants. All at once.
Through the crisp skeletal twigs of the brush, he could see Ravensmith and the others crawling cautiously toward him. He calculated his chances of running away.
Slim to none. Ravensmith would put an arrow in his back before he got ten yards away. He squirmed, wringing his sweaty hands around the crossbow. Damn thing. Why hadn't Colonel Fallows given them guns. Then he remembered the feeling he'd got when he'd fired into that guy's body. Sure, Toomey had already brought him down, but Foxworth had put another arrow into him anyway. To see how it felt. It felt good. The way the body twitched and jerked as the bolt thumped into it. It was, well, satisfying. Almost as good as fucking those twins and their mother, though he was the last in line and by then they'd all been so abused they were hardly conscious enough to notice him doing anything. He did it anyway.
Foxworth cocked his crossbow, slid a bolt into the groove, took aim on Ravensmith. Maybe if I dropped him…
Eric inched along the ground, the sand's heat seeping through his clothes. Sweat dripped into his eyes and he blinked it away. He scanned the horizon at the top of the incline, trying to decide how many were out there. Not many, he decided, or they would have attacked when they were all together. Probably thought they could pick Season and Tag off, then do the same to the rest later.
One thing was certain, Fallows wasn't one of them. If he had been, they'd all be dead by now. He'd never have tried such a lame ploy as this. He was too smart, no one realized just how smart.
'Rydell,' Eric called over his shoulder. Rydell bellied over the sand next to Eric. 'How's Season?'
'Tracy's got the arrow out. Don't know how good that arm's going to be, but she'll live.'
Molly edged closer. 'What about those guys in the cabins? Are they going to help us?'
Eric looked back to the cabins behind them. Everyone had gone inside. 'Don't count on it.'
'Maybe they'll lend us that shotgun,' Rydell said.
'I wouldn't. It's not their fight.'
'What about Tag? Maybe I should make a run for him. See how he's doing.'
Eric shook his head. 'He's dead.'
'How do you know? Maybe he's just unconscious.'
Eric gave him a look, turned back to study the terrain ahead. A few mesquite trees to the left, their pods a bright lemon yellow, ready to eat. A clump of stinging nettle bushes to the right, their green shoots used as flavoring for soups. All that information stored up in his brain along with song lyrics to 'When I'm Sixty-four' and Magic Johnson's free throw percentages for the last three seasons. 'There's only a couple places up there with enough cover to hide. If we pepper them with a few arrows, we should get a reaction. Ready?'
The movement was so slight, Eric couldn't be sure it was real. Maybe it was just a chuckwalla lizard. When frightened they blow themselves up like balloons and wedge themselves into crevices of rocks. Whatever it was, Eric flipped his crossbow toward it without hesitation and squeezed the trigger.
The bolt punched through the saltbush, severing a few dull green flowers before whistling by Foxworth's dirty ear. The shock of having Ravensmith fire at him just as he was aiming at Ravensmith, jolted Foxworth off
