Chapter Twenty-One.
Quick and quiet. That was how Alejandro moved. The sky fire lit up the night landscape with a flickering green light. Some nights, the stars were hard to see. Some nights you could see the Milky Way.
Other nights you had trouble seeing the moon, the sky fire was so bright. Tonight was one of those nights. Nightmares walked the Earth when the sky burned like this.
He approached the rock formation. The night was bright as day. He was terrified and ready to run. Before this nightmare started, he could depend on the men and women traveling with him to help him if he got into trouble. The people traveling with him were his friends and family. They would help him. Now, for his backup, he relied on a girl he had just met.
He could smell the dirt and the tufts of grass. He could smell the juniper trees and the scent of the far-off river. His straining ears could hear beetles on the ground, gnats in the air, wind rustling the grass. Eyes constantly moving, searching for any sort of movement. His skin crawled. It seemed safe. But something was wrong. He could feel it.
His sweaty palms gripped the haft of his tomahawk. His entire body was shaking with fear.
The rocks sat on a tiny plateau, caused by river erosion over hundreds of years. He waited for what seemed like half an hour. Nothing moved. Nothing reeked of dead flesh. Night Walkers had a distinct smell. However, Alejandro could smell very faint traces of decay in the air.
Mustering his courage, he approached the rocks. He spotted an opening in the rocks that faced east. They were not a natural pile of rocks. Sandstone and adobe bricks. Flat top rocks about six feet above the surrounding ground. He approached cautiously, cold greasy sweat covering his entire body.
He needed to explore the opening to determine if it was secure. A refuge from the night. Alejandro crept forward.
Ha! The rocks formed a perimeter that would be hard or impossible to climb. Logs formed a partial roof. There was a pile of logs that could make a barrier at the entrance. People lived around here, and this was a refuge in case someone got caught out on a bright night.
He entered the area in between the rocks. The floor was undisturbed soil. This was a safe place. The slight lingering scent of the dead had to be from previous sieges. Human bones littered the area around the perimeter. Bleached white from the sun. Long dead. Safe.
He climbed up to the ledge around the haven and lit the small torch that was the signal for Kathleen.
***
Kathleen was watching the rock formation, thinking that Alejandro had a fifty/fifty chance of living until the sun came up. That thought sobered her right up. She had the same fucking odds of ending up dead that he did.
She had been following the murderers a week less than he had. Apparently, you could delude yourself into thinking that what you were doing was safe, since you hadn’t died yet.
Traveling at night was fucking dangerous. People lived behind walls for a damn good reason.
She had half a year’s experience traveling at night between her home and the Stevens ranch. Over familiar ground. But a Skyfire like tonight would have kept her behind the walls. Compare that to his caravan traveling for over a year, where they had rarely had friendly walls to protect them.
THERE! A glow in the center of those rocks! She re-evaluated him yet again. He was tougher, smarter, and braver than she had thought.
Back to the problem at hand. The safety of the rock formation didn't guarantee a safe journey there. The horses and Henry, the level-headed mule, were acting very skittish. The fact that they were nervous was making her very nervous. They could smell something she could not, even with nose bags full of feed.
Kathleen climbed onto Margarita’s saddle and scanned the landscape. She searched for the Night Walkers that were spooking the animals. She couldn’t see any. But they had to be out there.
She shook her head, furious with herself. Fuck! Other creatures roamed the night besides Night Walkers. For fuck’s sake, the city near her home was called Los Gatos. Named for the Puma that hunted the area. Wolves lived in this territory. Coyotes could be dangerous, if the pack were large and hungry enough. Wild dogs were rare, but much more aggressive than coyotes.
Fuck. Her heart rate doubled. Sharp teeth and claws in the night were just as dangerous as the Ghouls. Arguably more dangerous.
One shot from her pistol may drive off a single predator, but a pack would require multiple shots to scare them away.
Her breathing started getting faster and faster. The animals were all very tolerant beings, but gunshots in the weird green light would panic them, especially as spooked as they already were. They would fucking scatter.
Mounted, she could move faster, maybe fast enough to flee whatever was hunting her. But if a predator attacked Margarita, Kathleen might be thrown off the horse and break her neck.
Multiple gunshots would attract Night Walkers for fucking miles on a night this bright.
With the sky like this, it was guaranteed there were fucking nightmares walking around. Fuck fuck fuck. Her heart was pounding, and she was hyperventilating. She was close to panic. She sobbed.
Henry, the very calming and soothing mule, pushed his face into her back and snorted.
She forced herself to calm down. It didn’t work. Fuck fuck fuck. OK, try again. A single fuck. There was sanctuary over there, and an ally. Time to move. With her pistol in her shaking hand, she made her choice and led the animals toward the rocks on foot. Fuck.
***
Alejandro was standing atop the rock formation. He could see Kathleen and the animals moving toward him. But he could also see a small herd of Night Walkers milling about. They were out of Kathleen’s view. A slight rise in elevation obscured the arroyo.
Meirda. Every one of nightmares stopped their aimless wandering and turned in her direction.
Madre de Dios, they had discovered her somehow. He waved the small torch, hoping to attract her attention. Some of the burning pitch fell off the end and landed on his wrist. “Meirda!”
He dropped the torch.
It landed at his feet. Silence wasn’t working. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he screamed at the top of his lungs, “KATHLEEN! GET OVER HERE! ¡RÁPIDO!”
***
Kathleen led her herd of equines under the bright green sky. Something was wrong. She was moving as fast as the animals were comfortable with. Something was definitely wrong.
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Suddenly, she realized that the wind was changing directions at random. The animals got very upset. The wind shifted, and she caught a whiff of rotting flesh. She wasn’t being hunted by a predatory animal. It was fucking Walkers. She glanced at the rock formation and saw the small torch still burning. Then she heard a distant cry, “Kathleen! Get over here! ¡Rápido!”
She immediately stopped and removed the nose bags from the animals, then climbed into Margarita’s saddle. Kicking the horse’s sides, she set course for the rocks. Manchado started after her.
Kathleen, Margarita, and Henry were part of his herd now, and he was going to follow.
Running a horse at night was dangerous. A horse could break a leg while running because of poor visibility under the shifting green light.
Prairie dogs were annoying little things. They built holes in the ground. A half ton of running horse stepping into one of their holes would be a disaster.
Kathleen and her herd of frightened animals arrived at the rock formation. Alejandro was standing in front of the passageway in the rocks. When he grabbed the halter on her face, Margarita reared her head back and tossed Alejandro up into the air like a rag doll. Margarita reared up and was about to trample him when Kathleen turned her to the right.
Alejandro rolled out from under the horse then stood up, waving his arms. He shouted, “Calm them down, and lead them in there!”
He pointed at the pile of rocks. Margarita bucked fiercely, almost throwing Kathleen off. Alejandro turned and ran into the passageway. Fuck that. He had shown them the way. If they wanted to die, that was their choice.
As he ran down the passageway, he whistled at Manchado, a two-tone command to come to him. Manchado ran around Margarita and followed him into the rocks. Henry demonstrated his status as the most intelligent and risk adverse member of his family. He followed Manchado into the passageway.
Henry was a smart mule. Despite being dark and close, it was a better than what the monsters behind him offered.
Kathleen regained control of her terrified horse. Margarita was covered in sweat and shaking. Kathleen dismounted and darted to the horse’s head. She grabbed her halter and started talking to her, calming the terrified horse.
"Come here," Alejandro whispered to her from the entrance.
Kathleen pulled Margarita’s reins and led her into the passageway.
Alejandro grabbed Kathleen and pushed her into the wall. “Calm them down. I’m going to block the entrance.”
He pushed his pistol into her chest and grabbed her right hand. “If you can’t control them, shoot them right in the fucking head. If one of them loses control in here, we could both get killed.”
He gave her hand a squeeze and placed his pistol in it, then turned and ran.
She watched as Alejandro ran back down toward the opening and the pile of logs at the entrance. He stopped and removed the rifle from his back, as well as the ammunition case and his water skin.
Unencumbered, he raced toward the pile of logs and dragged them to the entrance. He started lifting them over his head and dropped them into the slots carved into the entrance to the refuge. He struggled with the logs as the barrier reached his chest.
Kathleen had calmed the animals down, then joined him. Grabbing one end of a log, she helped him build the barrier. Alejandro looked over his shoulder at where the animals were.
Kathleen grunted, “They’re fine, hurry!”
He grunted back, “I am hurrying.”
She giggled, “Well, hurry faster!”
He snorted, then giggled as well.
The last log was placed. Forming a barrier that was higher than their heads. Kathleen shook her head. That wasn’t saying much. Neither one of them was very tall.
The two of them laughed silently, hysterically. They both put their backs to the stone wall and slid down to sit on the dirt floor. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, they tried to calm down.
Kathleen pulled his pistol out of her jacket pocket and handed it to him. “You forgot, I have my own.”
Alejandro started laughing again. He got himself under control. “I didn’t forget. I didn’t want to have it with me in case the walkers got here before I could build the wall. I thought I might use it instead of my axe, and cause more Walkers to start this way.”
Kathleen giggled again. “I never would have thought of that.”
“I am guessing that maybe I am smarter than you.”
“Then why is your English so bad?”
They both collapsed into hysterics again. Shoulder to shoulder, they got themselves under control. The wind shifted again, and they sobered up. Alejandro got on his hands and knees and peered through the makeshift wall, spotting the walker herd. The monsters were definitely heading in their direction. Meirda. They hadn’t caught sight of Kathleen or the animals, and their hearing wasn’t that good.
No one understood how the Walkers found their prey. Whatever senses they used, their pursuit was random. Sometimes they would walk past a hiding place. Other times, they seemed to follow like bloodhounds.
Why were they still heading this way? Kathleen was beside him, peering through the logs. His wrist hurt. He looked at the burn on his wrist. Meirda!
Kathleen turned to him and asked, “Where is your torch?” He looked at her. Then pointed at the top of the rock that made up the right side of the entrance.
Eyes wide, she swore breathlessly, “Oh shit! Oh shit! Shit shit shit! Oh, fuck!”
The torch. It burned merrily atop the rock where he had dropped it.
Alejandro jumped to his feet and scrambled to the ledge. He picked up the torch and shielded it with his body. He nearly fell from the ledge. But he made it to the ground with the torch still burning.
“Why did you leave it up there?!”
“You wanna to talk or do you want to get ready, señorita? We are in trouble.”
“If we live through this, we are gonna have a talk.”
“I look forward to that. Now shut up and come with me.”
They both walked back to where their small herd was milling. It wasn’t as cramped as she had first thought, but that was a bad thing. There was plenty of room here for the animals to do some serious kicking if they panicked.
Alejandro looked back at Kathleen and said, “Let’s get them unsaddled, quickly like. Put the stuff over there where it won’t get tramples on it.”
They made quick work of it. Then he pulled out a strange leather mask, shaped like a nosebag for an equine. Odd tubes stuck out, and a large stem stuck out next to a small bowl.
“In my left saddle bag there is a cloth pouch with a thong holding it shut. Bring it here, please.”
She ran to the bags, found the damp pouch and came back. She was confused. They were supposed to be getting ready for a siege. What the hell was he doing? Suddenly she smelled cannabis. He was doing something with the strange mask and one of the water-skins.
Not taking his eyes off of what he was doing, he spoke quietly, “Hobble the animals. Three-way, Por Favor.”
“Three-way?”
“Front leg to back leg and back leg to back leg. That way they can’t kick.”
“Ahh! I got it!”
“Go under the horses. Stay away from the ass end. I need your help, not you having a broken bones because of horse’s asses kicking you.”
Kathleen shook her head. Even now, he was still fucking up his English. It must be second nature.
She grabbed her hemp rope from Henry’s pack and pulled out her knife. She hated to cut the rope, but she didn’t have a choice. When the animals were hobbled, she took the coiled rope and tossed it toward the pile of saddlebags. Alejandro was talking to his horse in Español. He opened up the pouch she had given him and then started cursing.
“What’s wrong?!”
“The cannabis is wet. “
“What is that thing?”
“You place the cannabis in here and blow in the tube. The water cools the smoke down. It will keep them calm when the walkers get here. But this shit is all wet!”
“I’ll be right back!”
She ran back to the pack mule’s packs. She rummaged around. Ha! She ran back and when she arrived, Alejandro he was still trying to dry out his weed. She bumped his shoulder and opened her ceramic jar. The heady smell of powerful cannabis wafted out.
He looked at her. Sniffed the jar and said, “Whoa. Give me some of that, Por favor.” He took the bud in his hand and sniffed it. He looked at his horse and said, “Sorry, my friend, I know you don’t like it, but you are getting high.”
He placed the bud in the bowl, lit with his little torch and then blew into the tube. Manchado’s head jerked back. Alejandro pulled his head down and did it again.
“Does it take much?”
“Not much. Too much is bad for them. They can trip and break a leg. It can mess with their appetites and their intestines. They get hungry and thirsty. I only gave him a little. But this smells stronger than the weed that I have.”
“Our family grows two strains, one gets you really high, the other makes you calm. That’s what I gave you.”
“Maybe you are smarter than I am. Okay, now your friend’s turn. Put this on tight on the face.”
“Show me how.”
The two other equines were drugged, and they put feed bags put on. They made all the animals lie down facing the same direction. Strips of cloth were stuffed in the animal’s ears. Alejandro then placed the small torch on the ground near the wall.
“They will stare at the light and fall asleep.”
He grabbed his tomahawk, and with the thong around his wrist, he swung it in a vertical circle, twice.
“Let’s go see how close they are.”