James Axler - Cannibal Moon

No one said a word. Her longtime companions looked on in astonishment. In the space of a couple of minutes, Mildred had gone from devastated to near-demonic, and in the process, turned her physician’s oath on its head.

“Get him up on his feet!” she shouted to J.B. and Jak.

The two men scrambled to hoist the cannie from the cave floor.

Raising her arm, threatening to continue the beating, Mildred backed the monster against the post. “Tie him tight, Jak,” she said.

The albino teen cinched wrists and ankles to the rough-hewn pole.

When the cannie was immobilized, Mildred’s fury seemed to ebb. She viewed the blood on her gunsight with deep, deep disgust; she scooped up a dead man’s rag of a shirt and quickly wiped the muzzle clean.

“I need to talk to Ryan,” she told the others.

“So talk,” J.B. said.

“I need to talk to him alone.”

“We’ll wait outside the cave, then,” Krysty offered.

“No,” Mildred said. “Ryan and I have got things to do here, just the two of us. It’s going to take a while, and it’s going to get loud before we’re done. I don’t want the children to hear and be scared all over again.”

Jak stared at the battered, bound cannie, his ruby eyes glittering with menace, certain that rough justice was on its way.

“Take the kids back to the ville, Krysty,” Ryan said. “Find their parents, if they’re still alive. Jak, Doc, J.B., go with her.”

“Not a good idea for you two to stay here by your-selves,” J.B. said.

“I concur most emphatically,” Doc said. “We either should all go, or all remain, for safety’s sake.”

“We’ve got plenty of ammo,” Ryan said. “Daybreak’s not far off. We’ll be fine. We’ll catch up with you in the valley.”

The companions didn’t like leaving them behind, but there were no more protests. Mildred had earned herself a private face-to-face, and private payback, if that’s what she wanted.

“We’ll see you back at the ville, then,” J.B. said. With a wave of his arm he led the others out of the cave.

Krysty touched Mildred on the hand as she herded the wide-eyed children past her. “You saved them,” the redhead said. “You saved them, and you survived. You did great, Mildred.”

After the companions had filed out, Ryan threw another hunk of wood on the glowing coals and watched it slowly ignite. “What’s going on, Mildred?” he said.

“Something real bad.”

“Figured that.”

“I wanted to tell you about it first,” she said, her voice tight, her words clipped. “I need you to make me a promise. I need you to give me your word on something.”

“Of course.”

“Before you and the others got here,” Mildred said, “the bastards force-fed me cannie brains.”

Ryan felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. The puzzle had been solved, albeit horrifically. Now he understood why she had acted with such uncharacteristic savagery.

“They were infected brains, Ryan,” Mildred said. “Terminal stage oozies. Three of them ganged up after they had me tied to the post. They made me swallow a plateful. Afterward I vomited up as much as I could, but chances are I’m infected.”

Ryan reached out to comfort her, but she backed away.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take for the oozies to manifest,” she told him. “I don’t know what will happen when the infection starts to spread through my brain.”

“You didn’t have to keep this from the others.”

“Yes, I did,” she insisted. “We’ve been together too long. Covered too much ground, been through too much hell. I trust every one of them with my life, Ryan, but not with my death. I’m afraid they might wait to do what needs to be done, out of friendship or love or misplaced sympathy. I won’t risk that. I don’t know how long I can fight off the disease. I may not know I’ve lost the battle until it’s too late for me to do anything about it. What I’m saying is, I may be too weak or too crazy to eat my own gun. Ryan, I want you to promise me you’ll do the job when the time comes. Without hesitation or mercy. Will you do that for me?”

It wasn’t a deed Ryan wanted on his conscience, it made his head reel to even contemplate it, but he couldn’t refuse her. He concealed his reaction behind a mask of stone, looked her straight in the eye and said, “You got it, Mildred.”

“And there’s something else. It’s the reason I stopped Doc from chilling that one.”

“I wondered why you stepped in like that,” Ryan said. “After what the bastard did to you, why you didn’t shoot him yourself?”

“When they had me tied up,” Mildred said, “the cannies started talking about their ‘condition.’ They claimed they had medicine for the oozies. They didn’t elaborate on what it was or where it came from. They said it kept them alive, even though they had been in final stage for over a year.”

Ryan turned and addressed the filthy, scarred man tied to the pole. “Is that true?”

The cannie cackled and spit a big crimson gob in the dirt.

“It probably was idle talk,” Mildred said. “Something they made up to mess with my head. Or maybe they came across some carny show snake oil, drank it down and are hoping against hope. On the other hand, it just might be something real. Ryan, I know it’s a hell of a long shot, but I’ve got a short list of options. I’m looking at a triple nasty ride on the last train west. It’s a journey I surely don’t want to make.”

Ryan said nothing. He’d seen a few victims of end-stage oozies in his time. Based on that experience, if he’d been the one infected, he knew he’d have been grasping at straws, too.

“I’ll tell you everything,” the cannie offered, “if you just snip off one of them nice, crispy ears and pass it over to me.”

“Shut up,” Ryan said, “or I’ll saw off your rad-blasted foot and make you eat that, boot and all.”

The one-eyed cannie grinned back, showing off the bloody slivers of his fractured incisors. “You can’t do anything to me that I won’t purely enjoy.”

“You’re wrong there,” Mildred assured him. “If we do absolutely nothing, you’re going to purely hate it, and sooner or later you’ll tell us everything we want to know.”

The cannie spit again.

“You got a name, shitbag?” Ryan said.

“I got two names. My born name and my hunting name.”

“Take it from me,” Ryan said, “your hunting days are done. What name were you born with?”

“Georgie Tibideau Junior,” the cannie said. “From the Siana line of Tibideaus, though if you asked my ma and pa about me, I suppose they would deny I was ever born.”

“You’re a long way from home, cannie,” Mildred said.

“Been walking the Red Road for years.”

“What road?” Ryan asked.

“You never heard of the Highway of Blood? It’s the path all cannies take, the path we make. It stretches from here to there.”

“‘There?’” Cawdor said.

“The homeland.”

“And where might that be?” Ryan asked.

Tibideau squinted his good eye up at Cawdor’s face, then said, “You know, I should get me a patch like that. Got some style. Bet it keeps dirt and crap from falling into the hole, too.” Having delivered a transparent compliment, the cannie tried to reap an undeserved reward. “You know you folks broke in before I could finish my morning snack,” he told them. “Come on, brother, use that big, sharp blade of yours and hack me off a hunk of one them dead ’uns. Don’t let that good meat go to waste.”

It was Ryan’s turn to hawk and spit.

Interrupting the cannie’s calorie intake was the whole idea.

Ryan and Mildred took seats on flat rocks near the fire and propped up their boots, settling in for an extended rest.