Robert Walker - Cutting edge

“No, I'm going on. Look.” On the other side of the horse, stashed into a sheath below the saddle, there was a rifle. “I'm going to do what I can for Lucas. Now, go! Get to the house and get a call out to 911, Phil Lawrence, and anyone else you can think of.”

“Are you sure, Meredyth?”

“Yes, now go… go!”

“All right,” he relented, kicking at the sides of the animal he rode, going due east in the direction of the ranch house. In the distance, he could see faint light.

Meredyth pushed on alone, praying against all odds that Lucas had killed one of them rather than that he had been killed. The runaway horse was, she believed, a good sign. She snatched out the rifle and held it up, checking out its balance and sight and determining if it was loaded. She tried to recall all that Lucas had taught her about firing a weapon.

She moved on cautiously but quickly, telling her horse repeatedly to giddap.

She realized how deep her feelings for Lucas had run; she realized that he was, in fact, the best friend she had ever known, and that he had sacrificed everything for her.

Lucas struggled to locate another safe haven in which to await his quarry with the patience of a turtle, knowing that his enemy would come. But he also knew that he had only one arrow left. If Bullock and Andrew Bryce came together, he stood no chance.

He waited. His shoulder throbbed, his leg burned, and he was exhausted, but he tried desperately to remain alert. In a moment, he heard them coming.

They were together. They had seen wjiat devastation Lucas Stonecoat could wreak, and they wisely remained in sight of one another. Lucas heard their whispers as they approached, but could not tell from which direction they came. Overhead? To his right? Left? Front? Back? It was impossible to tell in this rocky area where echoes bounced like stones ricocheting.

Lucas heard no one now, the voices falling silent, but he sensed that his two would-be executioners were extremely close, certainly within range of the deadly weapons they carried.

Lucas saw no one, heard not so much as dust flake from the rocks when an arrow burned through his side, cutting a wide, angry swath through his flesh and pinging on the rock surface he lay against, making him yelp in pain.

“I got the bastard!” It was Bullock's voice.

Lucas fired where he saw the shadowy figure raise a victory sign by lifting his bow over his head. Lucas's arrow was a shock to Bullock, who didn't quite believe it was sticking from his stomach and out his back. He dropped his bow and grabbed on to the arrow shaft in his abdomen, holding on to it as if it were the handle for a ride. This, moments before he toppled over backwards and some forty feet into the dry riverbed behind him.

Lucas had no more arrows now, and he was bleeding badly from the new wound to his side, his shoulder stitches and his leg. He feared moving and he feared staying. He didn't know where Bryce was, and he didn't know if an attempt to move now would be met with another arrow.

There was only silence.

Bryce was the only one left, but Lucas had lost. He was empty-handed, wounded, unable to defend himself. Lucas tried to soothe his frustration and anger with the knowledge that Meredyth and Randy had had time to get free, and that he had killed the lot of them, save Bryce.

“End of the road, red man!” shouted Bryce, whose eyes and red laser were directly covering Lucas where he lay in shadow among the rocks.

Lucas gulped for air, feeling the blackness and weakness overtaking him, feeling a blackout coming on, grateful that he would not feel the arrow sting, when suddenly a gunshot exploded from somewhere in his subconscious-some wishful thought, he believed-and he blacked out, imagining he'd never wake again in this life.

Overhead, Andrew Bryce let fly with the arrow meant for Lucas Stonecoat, but it had gone astray, high into the sky, because he was clawing at his back where the melon-sized hole in his chest had originated when the hunting bullet ripped into him. He twirled, knowing he was dead, pirouetting on recoil and to face his killer.

“I'll see you to hell, woman!” he cursed Meredyth Sanger. “No, I think you'll be quite lonely there, Helsinger One!”

She used the stock of the gun to shove the dead man over the side and into the rocks below where Lucas had unsuccessfully hidden.

Meredyth wasn't sure if there were others nearby still stalking Lucas and her, so she held fast to the rifle, climbing down to Lucas, praying he was still alive. He looked quite dead.

Panting, listening for any flicker of noise or movement, she made her way to Lucas, finding him still breathing, the arrow in his side looking nasty and menacing. Lucas had stripped away his shirt at some point, likely to throw the dogs off, and his body was painted with streaks of blood.

She feared for his life, grabbed him up in her arms and held him tightly to her, reassuring him, speaking gently and soothingly into his ear, telling him that Randy was getting help, that help was on the way. She cried as she spoke, the huge Remington rifle at her side, but no one came and Lucas's blood began to discolor her skin, bra, and panties.

He could barely speak, but she found Lucas mumbling some gibberish about a creation myth, saying “My forefathers believed that their homeland was in the center of the universe… pictured Earth as a floating island suspended by four cords from the heavens, and the sky was made of solid rock.”

“Shhhh,” she tried to get him to rest.

“Before the island was created, all men lived above the rock sky…”

She tearfully pleaded, “Don't you die on me, Stone-coat…”

“But it became crowded above the sky, so the water beetle was sent down to explore the water world beneath the floating island. It was the beginning of this world…”

“Hold on, Lucas… Damn you, hold on. Don't you go dying on me,” she said in a threatening voice, which disintegrated into tears.

Dawn woke Meredyth where she had fallen asleep beneath Lucas's weight. Her eyes opened in reaction to the noise of a helicopter, which came slowly over the rocks, first sounding like a chain saw, then a lawn mower, until suddenly it was deafening. She saw it go over so quickly she hadn't time to react. It had the HPD logo on it, and she dared guess that Randy had gotten to Captain Phil Lawrence.

She lifted the rifle so its stock was balanced against the rock and fired a distress shot into the air.

“Damn noise is enough to wake the dead!” Lucas shouted at her as he came to.

“Lucas! You're all right.”

“Shot all to hell, if you call that all right. God, I got pain to complain about now. Damn, but this arrow in my side is annoying as hell.”

She laughed and kissed him, his face grimy from perspiration and dirt.

Ouch! Owwww! Easy, easy on me,” he complained.

They heard horseback riders, and over the stones now rescuers appeared, followed by Phil Lawrence and Randy Oglesby, alongside of whom stood Fred Amelford and Jim Pardee. They all saw Meredyth, the rifle and Stonecoat. Beyond them, they saw Bryce's dead body. Not far off in another direction, they saw what remained of Bullock.

“Damned dead people strung all along the gulch!” shouted Lawrence down to them. “I can see that Stonecoat's a bloody mess, but are you hurt, Dr. Sanger?”

“No!” she returned. “But Stonecoat is hurt badly, and he's lost a lot of blood. We need to airlift him out of here to the closest trauma center.”

“You got it!” Lawrence radioed for the chopper to return to their quadrant.

“So, what happened to the water beetle after he dove into the great ocean world?” she asked.

He only hazily recalled telling her of the creation story. “He dove below the waters and came up with mud, and on that mud the earth's land masses were built, and then he returned to the sky people.”