Jason Frost - Badlands

The back of his head pounded as if someone were continuously tapping him with a baseball bat. He touched his fingers gingerly to the area, felt the crusted blood and matted hair. Old blood, at least.

Eric kicked over a hunk of the plaster wall next to Tracy's leg and a fat rat scampered up over her broken leg before burrowing back into the debris.

"Hey, I recognized that face," Tracy said. "We were roomies together up on the second floor."

"Looks like he's shopping for breakfast."

"Forget it, pal. You're fat enough."

Eric shaded his eyes, looked up at the dangling door above them. "I'll be right back, Trace."

"Where you going?"

"Back up there to look for my Walther."

She lifted her right hand, the skin scraped off and bleeding from the fall, but her S amp;W.357 still intact. "Wanna borrow mine?"

"You'd better hold onto it. Just in case."

He limped over the piles of splintered wood, dusty plaster and chunks of cement, balancing carefully on the shifting rubble. By the time he reached the front door of the hotel, his limp was almost gone and the dull throbbing at the back of his skull was only a slight pecking, like a crow nipping at his head.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor and stepped into the hallway. The dust aroused by the explosion still hung in the orange light like snow frozen in midfall. He cupped one hand over his nose and breathed shallowly as he walked down the hallway.

The room they'd been in no longer had a door. In fact, the doorway was twice what it had been. And a three-foot hole in the floor testified to where the grenade had been when it had exploded. Eric stepped over the hole and entered the room.

The narrow single bed had been pulverized, with bits of it scattered all over the room. The walls, oddly, were smeared with splotches of blood. A streak here, a blob there. But whose?

Eric searched the room carefully for his Walther and his crossbow. He found neither.

However, he did find bits and pieces of bloody fur that explained the bloody pattern on the walls. The rats. The ones that had been huddled in the corner had been splattered around the room. That's why Dobbs and the others hadn't hunted more closely for the bodies. In the dark they assumed the blood belonged to Eric and Tracy. So they'd gathered Eric's weapons and taken them back as proof for Fallows.

Eric hopped over the hole in the floor on his way out of the room, glanced down, and stopped on the other side. He knelt down, peered through the hole to the lobby below. The room was directly above the front desk. And there, lying on its back behind the desk, was his black crossbow. He scrambled down the stairs, recovered it, checked it over for breakage, found none. He cocked it and slipped a bolt next to the string. Immediately he felt a little better.

"Well," Tracy said, nodding at the bow when he returned.

"Yeah. They got the Walther, though."

"But why didn't they get us?"

He explained his theory.

"Makes sense. Besides, after seeing what happened to their buddies, they were probably eager to accept the explanation rather than go poking through the dark for us."

"Still, it's a little deflating to think they mistook a bunch of dead rats for us."

She laughed and the movement immediately caused a sharp pain in her leg. "Owww. Damn it, Eric, don't make me laugh."

He unstrapped the canvas knapsack from her back and slung it over his arm. "We'd better get you someplace out of the sun so I can tend to your leg."

"What's your early diagnosis, doc?"

"Well, the main concern is the fracture of the femur."

"Don't dazzle me with footwork, just tell me how long it will hurt."

"Depends. A fracture is a clean break of the bone. The jagged edges of the bone contain a rich supply of nerves and when they rub against each other or any other tissue, it hurts."

"No kidding."

"The pain and swelling could continue for weeks, even months. We've got to be careful that the sharp edges of the bone don't cut a nerve or a blood vessel."

"How long, Eric?"

"One to six months."

"Christ!"

"I'll splint and tape it, that'll help."

"But one to six months! There's no way you can track Fallows with me along."

Eric sat down on a block of cement. "I can always pick up his trail again. He's not exactly keeping a low profile."

"Yeah, but there's no telling what could happen to Timmy in that amount of time."

Eric thought back on the Timmy he'd seen walking across Fallows's camp. The slight swagger, the.hint of a sneer. The ice water that had washed through Eric's stomach as he recognized Fallows in Timmy's behavior. The horror.

"What are we going to do, Eric?"

He shrugged, stood up. "Get you out of the sun."

He lifted her carefully to her one good leg, wrapping her arm around his neck and half-carrying her on his hip. They made it around the corner of the building and were heading toward Bob's Big Boy when something caught Eric's eye. He squinted over at where the two men he'd killed last night were. Something was wrong.

"How long you say we were unconscious back there?"

She studied her watch. "Maybe four hours."

"Yeah. Wait here," he said, starting to uncurl her arm.

She clung tighter. "I'm getting used to hopping. Besides, I'd rather not be left alone again. Even to cross the street."

He saw that she was serious. "OK."

They hobbled across the street toward Santa Carlotta's Car Lot like clumsy partners in a three-legged race.

As they got closer, Tracy's mouth opened with shock. "Oh God!"

The two men laid about five feet apart. The guns and equipment had been stripped. That would've been Dobbs. But the other thing, Christ, who knows?

Eric lowered Tracy to the ground at least ten feet from the bodies. She was silent, keeping her mouth closed to preserve whatever food was in her stomach. She cupped both hands over her mouth and nose as if she feared the air might be contaminated.

Eric knelt next to the first man. He was about twenty-eight, with a wispy blond beard. He was naked, the same as his partner. Even the bolts that had killed them were gone. Dobbs wouldn't have wasted time stripping them. Nor would he or his men have done the other thing. The mutilation.

The first man's right hand was missing from his wrist. Scattered in the dust a few feet away were the bare bones of his fingers. One of his buttocks was missing, flesh torn in large hunks all the way down to the thigh. A few feet away his partner lay with only one leg and one arm, the clean white bones of each in a neat pile next to the trailer.

"What kind of an animal?" Tracy began.

Eric shook his head. "No animal. The hand was severed clean here. The leg and arm on the other guy were hacked and twisted free."

"Christ, Eric. You're talking about goddamn cannibals."

"Uh-huh."

They gripped their weapons tighter and glanced around.

Col. Dirk Fallows laughed.

Timmy kept the Walther P.38 thrust toward Fallows's chest and squeezed the trigger again. The hammer snapped, metal striking metal. No explosion. No bullet. Just the big, craggy face of Fallows laughing at him. He kept pulling the trigger, eight or ten times. Click, click, click…

Dobbs took a deep breath, not even realizing he'd stopped breathing the moment Fallows had given the kid the gun. His throat was dry from not swallowing. There were little crescents of blood on his palm from where his fingernails had dug in when he'd clenched his fist. He stared at his open hand. Shit, when had he done that? He wiped the blood on his pants. He could sure use a cigarette.

"Well, well," Fallows said, still chuckling as he stepped toward Timmy.

Timmy winced. He lifted the gun by the barrel as if it were a hammer, but Fallows snatched it away from him.