The Cutthroat Cannibals (15 page)

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Stone snarled as he started backtracking as fast as he could. But at the rate the damned dog was slipping
under, it would just be a memory within a minute.

“Hold on,” Cracking Elk shouted as he put his arm up to stop Stone from venturing out onto the dog-eating sand. “Lie down,
reach out for it like on ice—I’ll hold your legs.” The idea of getting his face down into the muck was unappealing to say
the least. But Stone lay down and squirmed ahead through the sand as Cracking Elk dropped flat and grabbed hold around his
ankles. Within seconds Stone was just within reach of the dog, which was looking at him with a most pitiful expression, only
its head now above the sand. It knew it had fucked up bad.

“Hang on, dog, just hang on,” Stone screamed as he reached into the muck trying to find some part of it to grab. Just as the
hapless animal’s head completely vanished beneath the sucking sands Stone grabbed something—the dog’s right leg—and pulled
back with all his might. Stone gripped with everything he had and yanked his arm back toward him. It was incredibly hard going,
like ripping something out of setting concrete.

“Pull,” Stone screamed out to Cracking Elk, lying on his stomach right behind him. “I’ve got it—pull me, man, fast. I think
I’m starting to slide into this shit myself.” It seemed at first as if the dog wasn’t going to budge even with both men exerting
all their energy. But suddenly the pit bull popped right up onto the surface, coughing and spitting a storm of mud from its
mouth. Stone pulled back hard at the same time the Indian wriggled backwards dragging Stone by his ankles. Within twenty seconds
they were all deposited on less shifting sands, covered with the slimy muck. The dog shook itself violently, spraying most
of the dirt onto them, and looked at the two men who had just rescued it and let out with an ear-cracking little whine, as
if it knew how fucking close it had just been—and well, thanks guys… I know I can be an asshole but…

“No rest,” Cracking Elk said after about sixty seconds. “It will be this way all the way downriver. Every mile holds danger.
We’ve got to keep on, never stop except when we drop. To slow here is to die.” Stone was starting to believe the bastard.
The whole river valley had an eerie, dangerous quality about it as if it existed only to destroy living things—take them down
in its watery grasp, smash them against its rocks, grip them in sandy jaws and take them to asphyxiating deaths. The Indian
was right. They’d better get through here as fast as they could travel. Stone had no illusions: he was the one slowing the
whole fucking game down.

But it was Cracking Elk who ran into the next bit of trouble. And when it came, it came like a rocket blasted from a hidden
silo. He had just walked over to a tree about thirty feet from shoreline, thinking he saw the carcass of a small animal, when
a shape launched itself from a bush nearby and came right at the Indian like a mini tank: a warthog, only slightly larger
than Excaliber, but a solid sheath of muscle and tusks a good twelve inches long, which looked as sharp as assault bayonets.
The brave jumped straight up in the air, driven by sheer fear to leap a good four feet off the ground and right over the thing’s
charging tusks and back.

The creature was ugly as sin, Stone could see as it slowed itself fast and turned for the second charge. Its face was a huge
snout with great teeth bigger than the pit bull’s, and immense tusks that looked like they could cut through steel, all set
atop a small but extremely powerful body covered with a coarse layer of dark matted fur. The creature stank to high heaven,
a walking musk factory, as it wheeled around seeking the man it had just missed. But Excaliber was just as fast. With a growl,
the pit bull caught the warthog’s attention and the wild animal froze. As all porkers are, it was smart as shit, and this
hog was more clever than most. And mean too. It snarled back and decided that the pit bull was more of a danger than the man
it had started after. Jumping straight off the dirt and wheeling around in midair with amazing grace and speed for such an
ugly little fucker, the warthog made a ninety-degree turn and charged toward the pit bull.

But the distraction that the terrier had created was all that Stone needed. For as the wild pig ran by him hardly noticing
him standing there almost motionless Stone brought the branch crutch down with all his might. The stick slammed into the warthog’s
head with a sickening crack and the animal stopped in its tracks as if it had just run into a brick wall. Its whole body shook
all over with rapid, violent quivers. But Stone wasn’t going to give it a chance to get a second wind. He raised the stick
again and brought it down even harder. This time a huge crack appeared in the side of the animal’s skull and red shot out
like maple syrup from a tree. Still the warthog wouldn’t go down and even as Excaliber started toward it, his jaws stretched
wide, the hog stomped its front hoof in the dirt and prepared to charge again.

Stone raised the stick one more time and brought it down with every ounce of strength left in his racked body. This time the
stick crashed right into the top of the skull and the warthog dropped, all four knees giving out at once. It lay there unquestionably
finished, what with brain spurting out of a huge crack in the head like yolk from a broken egg. The body shook as if an electric
current was going through it. The Indian went down on one knee and quickly sliced out a whole section of the tenderest and
most nutritious meat from the side of the beast and wrapped it in leaves. Then not even looking back as the creature went
into its final death spasms, the two men and a dog headed down the river, wondering just what the hell was going to come after
them next.

They walked until it started growing dark. At last as the sun fell like a wounded bird from a sky all blood red and oozing,
Cracking Elk said, “It’s time to stop. We must build a fire to keep the night stalkers away. There are many here.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” Stone replied, dropping down to his good knee as he huffed away madly. “That Night of the
Living Porkchop back there convinced me of anything bad you want to say about this cursed place.” The Indian turned his back
on Stone as if he didn’t want him to see what he was doing. The brave fiddled around with his hands and presto, within a couple
of minutes he had a small fire built up of dry weeds and twigs.

“So Indians really can make fire from rubbing two sticks together?” Stone asked in friendly fashion as he walked over and
sat down in front of the warming rays of the fire. It was the first warm thing he had felt all day except for the stinking
hot breath of the charging hog.

“We have our ways,” Cracking Elk replied, as pokerfaced as ever, not even looking at Stone’s face. He never seemed to look
right into the white man’s face—as if it was too painful to confront the man who had destroyed his rep—as if Stone might see
the lust for murder that burned just beneath the surface like a raging storm in the brave’s heart. He took out the strips
of pork steak he had carved from the recently deceased and within minutes the delicious scent of roast pig was wafting over
them all. They ate the mass of meat, the dog, needless to say, slurping up everything that wasn’t tied down.

Stone swore that even the pit bull would be filled up after the feast of charcooked pig, but as they prepared to go off to
sleep, lying in the dirt on little leaf and twig beds they had quickly built, the dog somehow caught a bat flying in wild
circles above the fire. It crunched the little black mammal between its teeth, killing it in a single bite. Then the two men
had the supreme pleasure of listening to the animal gnaw on the bat for hours, crunching each wing, each bone, chewing on
the thing lustily as if it might never eat again.

S
TONE hadn’t the foggiest idea what time it was when he was awakened. But it was late. The hour of the doomed, somewhere between
the end of the night and sunrise. A limbo of time in which the vilest of creatures walk the face of the earth and claim it
for their own. Suddenly Stone heard again the sound which had awakened him. A joining together of numerous voices? Howls?
Stone didn’t know what the hell they were. But he knew he didn’t like them. There was something dark in them. Something that
promised blood.

“What the hell is that?” Stone asked through the darkness as he saw that Cracking Elk was awake, his eyes wide open, sitting
up and listening.

“I—I don’t know,” the Indian answered. And even in the darkness Stone could see that the brave was scared. “We’ve heard the
sounds far away sometimes when out hunting early in the morning. But never this close. They can’t be more than a mile from
here.”

“They? What are they?” Stone asked, feeling that the Indian was reluctant to say more but in fact knew a hell of a lot more.

“Demons,” Cracking Elk answered with a look of supernatural awe. “Ntani—the clawed ones.” He made a sign over his chest with
both hands, not dissimilar to a Catholic crossing himself, only this was two circles in opposite directions.

The sound rose again, and this time it made the hairs on the back of Stone’s neck rise up like little quills and stay there.
The sound was unearthly. He had never heard anything even remotely like it. Excaliber too had now risen up onto all fours,
pointing toward the sound. The dog didn’t like it either: its fur bristled and its jaws seemed to grind against one another
as if sharpening the teeth within for trouble ahead.

The men tried to go back to sleep, to ignore it, and the dog as well, once it saw that they weren’t heading out. The three
of them lay there trying to count sheep, count wampum, count bones, whatever. But it was a joke. How could you sleep when
the choirs of hell were practicing right down the fucking road. As he lay still, Stone started distinguishing between different
wails within the cacophonous siren of sound. After half an hour with not the slightest diminishing of noise he sat up again.
The Indian was already up, kneeling as if in meditation, listening hard.

“Let’s go check it out,” Stone said, looking firmly at the brave. “I’d rather see whatever the hell is out there before it
sees us. If we’re in danger perhaps we can plan some countermeasures.”

“Yes,” Cracking Elk replied opening his eyes. “We must see.” With that he rose up from his crouch and smacked the dirt off
his buckskin pants and jacket. Stone rose with somewhat more difficulty, cursing to himself. He hated being crippled. It made
a hard world a hell of a lot harder. Stone glanced over to the other side of the smoldering fire, just a few orange coals
glowing beneath the dark gray ash. The dog was sound asleep. Having seen that the human crew wasn’t about to check things
out earlier, it had assumed that that was it for the night and had gone into heavy hibernation. Just as well, Stone thought
as he hobbled off behind the Indian. They didn’t need the damned dog charging into some pack of whatever the hell was out
there and setting the demonic crew on them all.

Stone followed Cracking Elk in the near darkness, lit with only a dim, dark purplish light that trickled down from above as
night hung on and dawn struggled to make even a dent of light in the eastern sky. It was rough over the rocks along the shore
but at least no brambles which had torn Stone’s arm and chest to shreds the day before. The Indian went at near full speed,
and Stone had to hobble along like a one-legged maniac with his ass on fire to keep up.

The screams and howls grew louder and louder, until it was deafening, taking up their entire senses like the roar of a jet
or the passage of a screaming subway train. Only these were not things made of steel but living beings, a chorus of madness
in rising crescendo that seemed as if it was trying to wake the very dead. The Indian came to a stop along the shore and made
a sharp right, heading toward the solid mountain wall that rose up a thousand feet, about a hundred feet away. But as Stone
followed, once again going through bramble bushes so his just-beginning-to-heal rips and tears from the day before were again
torn asunder, he saw that there was a much lower ridge about a hundred feet up. The angle was easy enough for even Stone to
ascend with the aid of his walking stick.

Halfway up he nearly tripped over something: bones! And in the minimal starlight from the billion galaxies burning dimly above,
he could see that there were bones everywhere along the hill. It was a fucking graveyard, or a garbage dump. The brave moved
slower and slower as he reached the top of the rise. Whatever the hell was on the other side, the last thing he wanted was
for it to spot them. Stone, with much the same thoughts in mind, winced as he climbed, for the choruses of yowling were actually
causing pain to his ears, making them ache as if icepicks were being slammed inside. Both men reached the top, a rocky ledge
about twenty feet wide, slid across it on their stomachs—and looked down onto the other side. Looked down onto the living
hell unfolding a hundred feet below them in a small valley bounded on each side by rocky cliffs several hundred feet high.
Looked down and prayed silently to their respective gods to protect them from the dark goings-on.

Dogs, hundreds of them, jumping and leaping about in the grayness, throwing themselves with abandon into the air and then
crashing down, smashing into one another with loud thuds. They spun wildly about, launching themselves every which way, all
howling and yapping, barking and snarling at once. The center of the mad dance appeared to be a tree that had been struck
by lightning and was burning brightly in the center of the valley floor. With its outstretched branches it formed a sort of
triangular cross around which the dogs raced and jumped in total madness.

As Stone settled down even further, pressing his face against the edge of the plateau, he could see that though some were
just leaping around, others were fighting, clawing and biting furiously at one another. Many already had huge chunks of their
flesh ripped out, their pelts splattered with bright red. Others’ jaws were blood soaked, bits of dog flesh hanging out in
jagged pieces. And yet not one seemed to mind. Those that were bitten yowled out in mortal pain, but they didn’t run off or
try to hide. Far from it, they seemed to wear their bloody holes as patches of honor, parading them, joining in the insane
frenzied death of the hundreds of dogs.