Read Rose Eagle Online

Authors: Joseph Bruchac

Rose Eagle (7 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

O
h my god. Oh my god! Did you see that?” Phil said.

It was maybe the most unnecessary question I had ever been asked. But I was not about to criticize Phil for asking it. I knew exactly what he meant. And more than my legs were shaking now.

Somehow, though, I managed to get words out of my mouth, words that sounded a lot calmer than I felt.

“Wait,” I said, lifting the shotgun and making sure I'd pressed off the safety. “Wait.”

As we stood there, waiting, three of the crows that had been in the next tree glided down and landed on our shoulders, two on me and one on Phil.

The one on my right cawked softly and tugged at my earlobe with its beak.

“Yeah,” I said, “Right. Like I am going to be able to protect you.”

All three crows cawked, joined by their four crow companions on the branch, as if saying that we were all in this together. Hopeful little things with feathers. Their optimism actually brought the ghost of a smile to my lips.

Briefly.

I had hoped that by taking shelter as we had against the tree we would not be seen from above or at least that the branches were so thick above us that if we were seen, the monster would have to land away from the tree and make its way to us across the ground.

Hope, though, is one thing, and reality is something else.

And that hope was dashed when we heard an earsplitting shriek from right above us.

“KKKAAAA-AWWWRRRRR!”

We'd been seen.

The other thing I had hoped for when we sheltered under the big cottonwood went out the window — along with all those birds that took off in panicked flight — when the huge bat-winged monster did not land away from our tree, but dived straight into it, breaking branches as it came in like a guided missile.

CRACK!-CRACK!-CRACK!-CRACK!

There was barely enough time for Phil to hurl himself to one side and me to throw my body to the other.

As I rolled, I heard a heavy thud and the thrashing of wings behind me, splinters and leaves flying past my face as if caught in a windstorm. But Batwing had missed me. Had Phil avoided being crushed by it too?

BLAM-BLAM! BLAM-BLAM! BLAM-BLAM!

The sound of six shots in aimed double bursts reassured me that my partner was both alive and striking back.

I pushed myself up. My hair had come free from its braid and hung over my face. I pushed it back with my left hand, lifting the sawed-off in the other — just as a claw-tipped wing as big as a tipi swung toward me. I fell backward, lifting the shotgun and firing. I didn't aim, but my target was big enough for me not to miss.

BOOM!

“KKKAAAA-AWWWRRRRR!”

Batwing's shriek that answered my first shot was so deafening and terrifyingly close that I answered it with another shot and a third one.

BOOM! BOOM!

But before I could get off a fourth shot or even focus on where those shots of mine were going, the front edge of one of the creature's wings struck my arm and sent my gun flying.

I looked up at what I was sure was going to be my death, as the monster's black sharp-fanged head loomed over me. Its huge leathery ears stuck out to either side of its head. Small cold black eyes focused on me with an angry intensity — eyes in the middle of a face that was part human, part horror. Its long-snouted mouth opened so wide that I could not only see rows of teeth that looked as sharp as spear heads, I could see down its throat and smell the rank, rotten odor of its breath as it leaned closer, drooling.

Strangely, all the fear I'd been feeling till then left me, and a kind of calm clarity settled over me. Everything around me came into focus. Leaves fluttering down from the old cottonwood, the brown texture of the earth around us, the creature itself.

Its body was as large as that of a big bear, but not like a bear. No bear ever had green scales outlined with patches of black hair. I could see that at least some of the shots fired by Phil and me had struck its body right in the center of its chest — where its heart had to be. But it had been protected by dinner-plate-shaped scales. All our bullets and shotgun pellets had done was draw a little blood from the surface before bouncing off. Its wings, which spread so far to either side that I could not see the ends of them, were starting to close around me, about to draw me in to that hungry mouth.

That was when the unexpected happened.

“Ca-awk! Ca-awk! Ca-awk! Ca-awk!”

“Ca-awk! Ca-awk! Ca-awk!”

A little whirlwind of black-feathered birds came diving in at Batwing's face. The seven crows aimed right at its eyes with their sharp beaks. And though they may not have been doing any physical damage, their assault made the creature straighten up and step back, swinging one wing at its little attackers. They dived and dodged, keeping up their attack.

Another step, and now Batwing had its back against the giant cottonwood. It raised its wing, and suddenly a black-ringed arrow pierced its leathery surface, lodging in the trunk of the tree. Another arrow, then a third, a fourth, and a fifth came whistling in. Arrow after arrow came so quickly that I realized Phil was more than just a good archer. He was one of those archers who could put half a dozen arrows into flight before the first one struck.

And those arrows were well aimed. Each struck a different point along the wing, pinning it to the trunk of the tree. The creature turned, thrashing its other wing against the one that was caught, trying to tear it free, its side turned toward me.

Another arrow whistled in. The creature struck it aside in midair with one sweep of its wing and turned back again to try to pull free.

I could see that it would manage to get loose. Deep as those arrows had gone into the cottonwood, it would break them off in time. While Phil shot, though, I'd rolled over and picked up the shotgun, which seemed to be unhurt. Racking another shell into the chamber, I looked for a place to aim.

The first three shells had been buckshot. The last three were heavy slugs. And when I saw what I thought might be a vulnerable place, I prayed that a slug would do the trick.

Phil was just off to my right, also trying to take aim at a weak point. An arrow flew, but it missed the monster's eye, glancing off its bony forehead. Batwing turned its head in Phil's direction and screamed in anger.

“KKKAAAA-AWWWRRRRR!”

Taking a deep breath, I seized that brief moment of distraction to leap in so close that if I was wrong, I was dead. I jammed the short barrel of my shotgun into Batwing's ear and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

W
e made good time for the rest of that day. The seven crows temporarily adopted us, scouting ahead and flying back from time to time to reassure us that our way was clear. That didn't surprise me. The creature that had just passed away from a bullet-induced brain aneurism had probably controlled so much of this territory that other dangerous critters had been discouraged from making it their home.

Neither Phil nor I seemed to have been hurt — aside from a few bruises and some scrapes that I dabbed with the salve from Aunt Mary's emergency kit. Phil had even been able to recover all of the arrows he'd shot, though it took some doing to lever and cut them out of the leathery wing and the tree trunk.

But he'd only done so after running over to me as I knelt next to the slumped body of a winged nightmare. There was a look of deep concern on his face.

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” I said, accepting his hand as he pulled me to my feet. “Good shooting . . . partner,” I said.

We stood there for a minute, my right hand in his, my left hand on his shoulder, both of us smiling. Then I gently took my hand back.

“We'd better get going, right?” I'd said then, even though I would have liked to have just stayed there like that for a long time.

“Right,” Phil agreed.

We passed an ancient sign, fallen over by the roadside. The only word still legible on it was WALL, which was strange, there being no walls anywhere in sight on the nearby land.

Out of the corner of my eye, it looked as if Phil was limping. But as soon as I looked his way, the limp disappeared — though I noticed he was biting his lower lip as he walked.

I held my hand up to the west, where the sun was only three fingers above the horizon. It would be dark pretty soon, and even though nothing had menaced us since the demise of the demon bat, I had no doubt that the nighttime would bring out more dangers than we wanted to encounter in the open.

I stopped walking to pull out Uncle Lenard's map and study it. Yup. There, just as I remembered, was a mark indicating that a safe place to shelter was close by. Likely just beyond the next rise in the road.

Phil raised an eyebrow as he looked at me. He did that every time he had a question, and it was so endearing that it made me smile.

“Are we close to the next place to spend the night?” he asked.

I folded the map, put it away, and began walking again, Phil staying half a step behind me to the right.

It was not over the rise ahead of us, or the next one, but we had to walk no more than two miles before I saw the glint of a metal roof.

“There,” I said.

We followed a narrow track, our feet crunching dried brush that had drifted over the trail. All around us the land was brown and dry, as it sometimes got in late summer. It was the kind of dryness that could easily turn into walls of flame rushing across the prairie. We'd have to take care with any fire we made that night.

Rain, I thought, we need rain.

But there was not a single cloud in the shimmering sky.

Long ago, back when the world was ruled by different nations and not an international corporation made up of modified humans who had planned to live forever, there had been the threat of wars. We'd all been taught about that time, a time that no one needed to worry about anymore. Such wars were past threats, as our Overlords had constantly reminded us. Their rule had saved us lucky proles from ever experiencing that sort of danger during our brief, overworked lives.

The structure ahead was a remnant from that time of one country threatening another with atomic bombs. It was part of what was called a missile silo site, rockets hidden under the ground in concrete tubes from which they could be launched. Those missiles were long gone, of course. But the abandoned structures remained here and there.

The building where we hoped to spend our night was nowhere near as big as the huge one from the night before. It had to be no more than thirty feet wide and sixty feet long. But it looked solid. Its roof was thick and metallic, its sides made of concrete except for the windows in its walls that were thick, translucent material — blocks of glass, perhaps. The single door did not have a lock or a doorknob. Instead, there was a sort of wheel that could be turned. So anyone — or anything — that could grasp such a wheel could spin it to the left and open that reinforced door.

But Uncle Lenard had thought ahead. I looked down at the base of the door, and what I saw reassured me. Three small sticks were leaned against that door, sticks that would have been unnoticed by most and knocked down when the door was opened. There were also three more sticks laid flat on the ground right in front of them. I carefully lifted those sticks up. The letters LCD, scratched into the dry dust beneath those sticks, had not been disturbed.

Phil was shaking his head.

“Man,” he said, “Your Uncle Lenard is something.”

Holding my shotgun — which had long ago been reloaded — I just gestured for him to open the door. He did as I asked, spinning the wheel and stepping back as he pulled it toward him.

The large single room that it disclosed seemed empty of anything living. I scanned the space carefully, though. I saw two wide sleeping benches recessed into the far wall. On the longer wall to my right was a wide console area with two chairs pulled up in front of dead viddy screens and other electronic stuff.

I looked back at the door we'd come through. There was a way to lock the wheel and thus secure it from the inside.

Right in the middle of the room was a campfire area ringed with rocks brought from outside. The metal roof vents just above it had been screened with heavy wire. Smoke could get out, but nothing larger than a fly could get in. The pile of firewood stacked next to it was plenty big enough to last us through the night and beyond.

Not only that, there were supplies stacked on shelves along the wall to my left, well back from the fire area. We didn't need anything right now, but it was good to know it was here in case we needed supplies on the way back. I put down my packs and walked over to see what was there. Dried rations, plastic jugs of water. Uncle Lenard had just about stocked up for a siege.

It made the place feel cozy. And I found myself smiling.

“Shall I shut the door?” Phil asked from behind me.

“Yes,” I said. “Go ahead.”

* * *

Darkness came quickly outside. The light filtering in through the roof vent and the cloudy windows vanished. A horned owl hooted, the sort of sound an owl makes when it is feeling secure, ready to hunt. It wasn't the call my old people always recognized as a warning that something dangerous was prowling the night. I wondered if it was the owl we'd seen back in that cottonwood stand — but that was miles behind us. Probably not. Only the seven crows had come this far with us, as far as I knew. I hoped they'd found a safe roost for themselves.

We pulled the chairs up next to the fire pit. Phil made a fire, heated up food, made tea for us. I leaned back in my chair and was soon half asleep, listening to the crackling of the fire.

“Want to hear a story?” Phil's voice was so soft that it blended with the sound of the fire.

“I'd like that,” I said.

“It's how crows got to be black,” Phil said. “Long ago they were all white. That's what my grama said who told me the story, at least. And there was this man, he was a hunter. One day when he was out, he found a crow. Its wing had been hurt, and a bobcat was about to jump on it. But the hunter drove that bobcat away. He picked up that little crow and took it home. He nursed it back to health.

“That crow was so grateful that it stayed with the hunter. It flew everywhere with him. It would fly ahead and scout for game, finding deer and buffalo herds. It would warn him if there were enemies ahead. Before long, that man became famous because he was such a good hunter and always knew where the enemies were. It was all because of that crow.

“But there was a medicine man who got jealous of that hunter. He made bad medicine and then sent word to the hunter of what he had done. He told the hunter that before long he was going to be struck by lightning and killed.

“When the hunter heard that, he spoke to the little white crow.

“ ‘My friend,' the hunter said, ‘I am going to be struck by lightning. I know it will kill me. You must go far away from me so you will not be harmed.'

“But that little crow did not go away. He was grateful that the hunter had saved his life. He was too loyal to fly away and save himself.

“Sure enough, just as the mad medicine man said, that night lightning struck the hunter's tipi. It killed the man and set his lodge on fire. The loyal little crow was not killed, but its feathers were all burned black. All crows have been black ever since then.”

I stayed silent for a while after Phil finished his story. I picked up a stick and stuck it in the fire.

“I don't think I like that story,” I said. “The hunter got killed.”

On the other side of the fire from me, I saw Phil nod. “That's true,” he said. “The hunter did get killed. And I said the same thing you just said when Grama told me that story. But then she reminded me that the story wasn't just about the hunter. It was about the crow. No matter what, that crow stayed loyal.”

“Just like you,” I said. I hadn't meant to say it out loud, but I did.

Phil looked at me. “That is about the nicest thing I've ever had anyone say about me.”

“It's true,” I said. “I'm glad you're with me. You've saved my life, and you've been right by my side — even when I've been rude to you.”

Phil shook his head. “You're not rude,” he said. “You're just shy. I know what that's like. I'm shy too.”

“You?” I said. “How could you be shy? You're so . . . perfect.”

“Wow,” Phil said. “First you don't say much, and then everything you say is a bigger compliment than I deserve.”

For a minute I found myself getting tongue-tied again. It was the way he was looking at me. “I . . . I'm sorry I've been so quiet.”

“Rose,” Phil said, leaning closer, “that's one of the things I like about you. You don't say anything unless you mean it. But, then again, there's not much that I don't like about you.”

“Really?” I said.

“Really.”

We just sat there like that, looking at each other, so close I could feel his breath on my face.
What next?
I was thinking. I didn't want to do or say the wrong thing and mess it all up now. But perhaps Phil could see how confused I was because he leaned back.

“Okay,” he said. “I guess we better get some rest before tomorrow, right?”

He stretched his arms over his head and groaned. “I don't know about you, but I am hurting all over right now after getting battered by that damn bird or bat or whatever it was.”

He stood up and smiled at me. “But we can talk more tomorrow, right? To be continued?”

I smiled back up at him. “For sure,” I said. “To be continued.”

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