Jason Frost - Badlands

He could no longer hear Greene's boots stomping through the mud and water. Was he gone, or only standing still, searching? He might even be staring at Eric right now. If only he could hold on a few more seconds. Just a few more.

It was no use. His chest spasmed again, water plunged into his mouth. He broke for the surface.

Stanley Greene hated water. Always had. Always would.

There was no reason he could think of why he should hate water, no childhood trauma. He'd never nearly drowned, nor had anybody he'd known. In prison, they'd asked him about that because of that incident his first day when he'd refused to take a shower with the other inmates. The real reason was because Jesus Perez, who was doing three to five for armed robbery, had found out Stanley had slept with his girlfriend Maria the day after Jesus had been sent up. Now Jesus said he was going to do the same things to Stanley that Stanley had done to Maria. The skinny spic wasn't kidding, either. Of course, Stanley didn't tell the officials that. Instead he'd made up some story about having nightmares of being eaten alive by piranha. Yeah, piranhas, he'd told them, acting real scared, little fish with a lotta teeth snapping at his, uh, thing. He figured they'd like the sex angle. Actually, he'd gotten the idea from some jungle movie he'd seen on TV the day before his arrest. Something starring Johnny Weissmuller, but not as Tarzan. That had kept the shrinks busy scratching their heads for the eighteen months he'd done at Chino. Every so often they'd ask him about the nightmares, kinda offhand, like they'd just remembered, and he'd say, Yes, sir, they're worse than ever. Most every night now. Can't hardly sleep worrying about my thing.

Meantime, Jesus got a sharpened spoon through his right lung during a Johnny Cash concert. Bled to death in his seat right in the middle of "Amazing Grace." They never found out who did it. Stanley still had the spoon, wore it around his neck on a gold chain he'd swiped from Maria.

Stanley Greene never went swimming and, even without Jesus around, wasn't all that fond of showers or baths. Even before the quakes, when he was living with some buddies down near the beach in Venice, he'd get off work from the dry cleaners and walk along the beach only on the off chance that some cute high school chick in one of those skimpy string bikini jobs might start talking to him. He had a nice body himself that looked good in a tight bathing suit, but that damn suit never once got wet since he'd owned it. Not once.

Water. Hell, he didn't even like to drink the stuff.

So what was he doing marching through this stinking creek in the middle of the night? That bastard Dobbs. Thought he was hot shit because Fallows put him in charge of this patrol. He'd go along because anything was better than having Fallows pissed at you. Jeez, this was the nastiest bunch of guys he'd ever seen brought together, in or out of prison, and they were all scared of Dirk Fallows. Still, that Dobbs had mouthed off a bit too much. Maybe could use some of Dr. Greene's spoon therapy. An attitude adjustment, yeah, between the ribs. Tickle, tickle, little Dobbs. Well, Stanley had seen what he'd seen. Ravensmith running through this creek, disappearing behind some brush, but not coming out on the other side. He'd seen it clearly through his scope.

But, then, where was the son of a bitch hiding?

Damn, this water was cold. Smelled bad, too. Probably being used as a toilet by most of the people living around here. Probably used it himself once or twice, further upstream. Thinking about it now made him want to take a leak. He could just climb out for a second and take a whiz over in the bushes. Ah, what the hell, his pants were already wet. They'd need to be washed out after walking through this muck anyway. He stood still, cradled his M-16, and let himself go. The warmth felt kinda nice.

Then he heard something behind him. Something stirring in the water. He shouldered the M-16 as he spun to face it, his finger hooking around the trigger.

"Hey, Dobbs! Goddamn," Greene shouted, aiming his M-16 at Eric's emerging face. Jeez, that scar. "Dobbs!"

But Eric hadn't come up empty-handed. He'd brushed aside the heavy rock on his chest and snagged his crossbow on the way up, wedging the black metal stock to his shoulder as he popped through the surface and balanced on one knee. The hardest part had been squeezing the trigger before gulping down any air. But he hadn't wanted to spoil his aim. The bowstring catapulted the sharp wooden shaft with 175 pounds of fury.

The bolt plunged through Greene's chest, just below the sternum, punching out hunks of flesh and muscle and organs like coring an apple. The bloody bits splashed into the water behind him. A hungry gray fish surfaced, slurped up a chunk and dove back down.

Greene continued to stand there aiming at Eric a few seconds afterwards. Then he got a funny look on his face, as if he'd just remembered a song title he'd been struggling with for days. He looked down at the feathers sticking out of his chest, then flopped backwards into the water.

The metallic chatter of another M-16 echoed through the night and a spray of bullets stitched the water six inches in front of Eric. He sprang up and kicked through the water for the opposite shore.

Another burst of semiautomatic fire chewed up a branch of the tree just as Eric ducked behind it. Wood and leaf confetti sprinkled down onto his dripping head.

"Don't waste the bullets, you dinks!" Dobbs hollered. Thelps, swing left. Hey, Ryan."

"Yeah?"

"How many grenades you got left?"

"Three."

"Loosen up your arm. You're pitching big league tonight."

Eric didn't move. They wanted to spook him, scare him into running so they could corner him. He hung the crossbow over his shoulder and pulled his Walther P.38 from his boot. He'd traded his Remington.32 for this. The man he'd traded with had been a hard bargainer, an ex-Honda salesman who applied a little too much pressure when he shook hands, trying to squeeze sincerity through your pores. He'd wanted Eric's Remington, the boxes of ammo, Tracy's Smith amp; Wesson.357 Combat Magnum and a night with Tracy, though he'd winked at Eric and said it wouldn't take a whole night, if Eric caught his drift. Eric did. The ex-Honda salesman had finally settled for the Remington, the ammo, half ajar of Skippy extra-crunchy peanut butter and a broken hand.

Eric wasn't worried about the Walther. He could've buried it at the bottom of the creek and dug it up a week later and chances were it would still clip the ears off a squirrel with the first shot. The pull on these things was a little rough, like squeezing a grapefruit, but it still delivered.

He jammed the gun into the waist of his pants, recocked the crossbow, and slid a bolt into the brass runner. It was too dark for them to be certain of where he was, so they were trying to force him to make a move, give himself away. If he fired his gun, they'd have the flash to zero in on. With the crossbow, they'd see nothing.

To his left, maybe thirty feet. A noise. The squeak of feet moving in wet boots. It was faint, could almost be mistaken for the sound of some anxious bird. Probably just what the guy hoped. But Eric had spent a lot of his youth learning the difference, mostly in front of a TV screen in Big Bill Tenderwolf's house on the Hopi reservation.

"Christ, listen to that, would ya?" Big Bill would say, pointing his beer can at the TV and shaking his head. They'd be watching another one of those cowboy and Indian cheapies. "Hear that noise? They're trying to tell us that that's how the Apaches communicate. Jesus, sounds more like someone farting than a bird calling." Then he'd let go with some warbling that always made Eric smile. "Now that's what a fucking owl sounds like."