The Howling III

Chapter Five

The forest took him in. It sheltered him from the night and hid him from the men who shouted and cursed as they crashed through the brush searching out the few survivors of Drago. In the morning the shouts were farther away. The smell of smoke still hung in the air. The sun was a pale disk behind a curtain of cloud. Malcolm rested and realized he was terribly thirsty. His instinct was to cry, but he did not. Instead he set out to find water, and the forest showed him where to look. There were shallow pools from the last rain, hollowed-out stumps that held enough to drink, and half-hidden streams that a man could miss if he did not stop to look.

Food was easier. Pine-nuts were plentiful, and there were wild blackberries and grapes. The leaves and stalks of goosefoot, and the fleshy green purslaine were tough and chewy, but they gave him nourishment. Sometimes he ate things that cramped his stomach and doubled him up in pain, but soon he learned which foods to avoid and which would give him the strength to go on.

But to go where? Everything that he had known was behind him, burned. Destroyed. Gone. He had no destination. The days passed. And the nights. He stopped counting. Sometimes Malcolm could hear the men in the woods. They were still out there stalking him. And he could smell them. Smell the acrid sweat of the hunter. The men were clumsy in the woods, and slow-moving compared to the boy. Still, he could not risk discovery. The men had guns. Malcolm well remembered what the men had done to his village. To his people.

By night he moved, restlessly and without destination, sustained only by the conviction that he must keep moving. During the day, when he would be more easily seen by the searchers, he rested under a simple lean-to constructed of boughs. It was an aimless existence, and a gnawing ache grew in Malcolm's heart. Somewhere, he felt, there was a place for him, could he but find it.

The growing ache was not only in his heart. For the first time in his life Malcolm knew hunger. Real hunger. The edible plants he found in the forest, the berries, the roots, the bark stripped from tender saplings, these were enough to keep him alive, but he was never completely free from hunger. Hunger for meat. It was a pain that never left him. A pain that grew worse every day.

Then one morning in desperation he snatched at a squirrel that sat on a stump regarding him curiously, Malcolm was surprised at the ease with which he caught the little creature. He killed it quickly, tore away the fur as best he could with his hands, and devoured it. He ripped the raw flesh from the tiny bones with his teeth. The meat was rank and tough, but it was better than bark.

Soon Malcolm discovered he was quick enough to run down and catch other small animals with his hands. Opossums, raccoons, once even a small deer. The streams were not deep enough to provide fish, but there were frogs to be taken. Malcolm's muscles grew lean and hard in his hunting exertions. His teeth white, his jaw strong enough to crack a bone.

There was no question of making a fire to cook the meat once he had caught it. Malcolm carried no matches, and a fire would surely attract the men. At first he had to force himself to gag down the raw meat, still warm from the living blood, but he learned. Before long, to his surprise, he liked it best that way.

The days stretched out, one indistinguishable from the next. During the nights he continued his aimless travels. Once he circled back to where the village of Drago had been. Nothing was left but ashes. Everything gone. Everyone dead. Malcolm never went back again.

And yet Malcolm sensed he was not alone. They were out there somewhere, others of his kind, running and hiding just as he was. He longed to find them, join them, but he did not know how. Sometimes in the night he could hear the howling. And he cried.

The nights grew colder. During the days it rained often. Malcolm learned to make a more sturdy shelter of evergreen boughs, overlapping them so the needles pointed downward and formed a run-off for the rainwater. He sat cramped for long cold hours in his shelters, hugging his knees and shivering.

There were fewer men in the forest hunting him now. The danger was not as great, but it was still there. As the scent of the men grew fainter, Malcolm grew careless.

His mistake came on a stormy evening as he searched along the trail for the makings of a shelter. He was hurrying, hunched against the rain. Still, had Malcolm been alert as he normally was, it would never have happened. Before him on the trail was a patch of ground covered with leaves. He should have seen that the leaves lay in an unnatural pattern. But this time he did not look before he stepped.

For a moment he did not know what had happened to him. There was a frightful crunching sound and searing pain shot up through his right leg. He fell heavily to the ground. The pain tore at him like fiery claws. On sheer instinct he tried to scramble to his feet, but the leg would not bear his weight. And something was holding it. Something heavy.

When he looked down, there below the tattered end of his trouser leg he saw the steel jaws gripping his ankle. The flesh of his lower leg was shredded, and pinkish white shards of bone jabbed out through skin. Blood seeped into the cracked leather of his shoe. He tried to move his foot. The grinding sound was almost worse than the new flash of pain. He fainted.

The night was an endless agony with long dark periods of tortured dreams, and stretches of consciousness during which he tried to rip his foot free of the steel trap. Clouds rolled down from the mountains and opened in great torrents of icy rain. Thunder boomed and echoed in the hills. Lightning streaked the sky where it was visible through the treetops.

Malcolm thrashed about on the ground in delirium. While his mind whirled, strange things happened to his body. Once he brought his hands to his face and in a blaze of lightning he saw the pads and claws of an animal. Or did he dream that? Reality blurred as the pain took possession of him.

The storm thundered and crashed through the night, then faded. The dawn was bleak and damp. A steady rain continued to fall. Malcolm awoke slowly in a fever, and for an instant he did not know where he was not how he had come there. He should be in a warm bed, not out freezing in the forest. Then the pain hit him again, clearing his mind, and the memory of the terrible night came back. He shifted his position and the steel jaws ripped his flesh. The trap. He remembered the trap. But he forgot everything else when he looked up and saw the giant.

Well, maybe not a giant, but a big, big man. From Malcolm's point of view, lying there on the trail, the man loomed like a mountain. The wild beard and the hair that hung to his shoulders were a dark, fierce shade of red. One of his hands could have covered both of the boy's. His chest and shoulders were massive as granite. He wore tough, ragged jeans and a buckskin jacket. Even through his pain Malcolm felt fear, sensing the immense power in the big man's body. Then he saw the giant's eyes. They were brown and bright and immeasurably kind.

The giant knelt beside him. Malcolm saw the brown eyes narrow with reflected pain when he looked at the ruined ankle. When Malcolm tried to sit up the giant pressed a strong, gentle hand on his forehead and eased him back down.

"You sure got yourself into a fix, son." The basso voice rumbled up from the deep caverns of the giant's chest. "You'd best lie still while I have a look."

He moved with uncommon grace for a man of his great size. He was careful to shield the ankle from Malcolm's eyes with his body as he examined it.

"Sonofabitch," the big man rumbled. "Steel teeth, double-spring. These mothers are illegal."

Malcolm winced as the big man's hand touched his foot.

"Easy, pardner. I know it hurts, but the first thing we've got to do is get this thing off you. It's going to hurt even more in a minute when I pry it loose, but there's no easy way to do it." He turned his head and the kind brown eyes looked down into Malcolm's. "How about it, can you stand a little more hurt right now?"

Malcolm nodded.

"Good boy. Close your eyes for a minute. Close "em real tight. Think about the happiest time you ever had."

Malcolm closed his eyes. He tried very hard to think of a happy time, as the big man had told him. But no thoughts would come. Only a blackness with fire and screams of the dying.

There was a loud metallic crack, and another fiery shot of pain in his ankle. Malcolm's eyes snapped open. The big man knelt beside him now holding the cruel steel trap in both hands.

"This is what grabbed you, son," he said. "Damned foul contraption." Then, as the muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged, he twisted the trap like the jaws of a shark until the end of a spring popped loose with a loud twang. He tossed the broken trap into the brush and returned his attention to the boy.

"You okay?"

Malcolm nodded, blinking back the tears. He was afraid to trust his voice, not wanting to show weakness before the big man.

"Ready to take a walk?"

Malcolm looked down helplessly at the mangled ankle. It was free now of the steel jaws, but the torn flesh had turned a puffy blue-black shade. The foot pointed down and back at an impossible angle.

The big man again shifted his body to cut off Malcolm's view of the ruined ankle. "Oh, I'll do the walking," he said. "It's going to jostle you a little bit, but we've got to get you out of here." He slipped his powerful arms beneath the boy and scooped him up as easily as though he'd been stuffed with feathers. The big man rose effortlessly to his feet and started along the trail.

"Feel like talking?" he said.

Malcolm tried, but the best he could do was a small whimpering sound.

"Don't blame you," said the man. "I'll do the talking then. I'm accustomed to that. And you can listen. That'll be a rare treat for me. Have to talk to myself most of the time."

The big man strode easily through the brush carrying Malcolm in such a way as to minimize movement of his ruined ankle. The rhythm of the man's pace lulled the boy into a semi-doze. When he spoke, the big man's rumbling voice was comforting.

"My name is Jones," he said. "There used to be more to it, but I figure that doesn't matter, seeing as I'm the only one living out here, and not likely to be confused with anybody else. The folks in town know who Jones is. The crazy hermit, some say. The last of the hippies. Nature Boy. I couldn't care less what they call me, just so long as they leave me alone.

"And they do. I been living out here almost twenty years. Never have trouble with people. If you never see them, you can't have trouble with them."

They continued for several minutes in silence before Jones spoke again. "Well, I do see a few people now and again. Hikers. Birdwatchers. Lost kids sometimes. Hunters I have nothing to do with. When the animals start shooting back, then maybe I'll talk to hunters. Mostly I meet youngsters out backpacking. They remind me a little of myself back in the sixties. They're not as serious about things as my generation, maybe. More interested in getting a good job than banning the bomb, but I guess you can't blame them. It was a lot easier to get angry about a war if they were liable to draft you to go fight it.

"But there's nothing wrong with today's kids. Different values, that's all. Hell, most of the kids I went on protest marches with are working for IBM now, or somebody like that. Not Jones. I'm forty years old, ought to know better, but I still believe that if the world's going to be made better, it won't be the big corporations that do it. That's why they call me the crazy hermit."

Jones shouldered his way through a dense growth of scrub pine, and suddenly they were in a clearing. There was a neatly tended patch of grass, dotted with wild flowers. A smooth dirt path led to a solid little cabin of rough logs. A wisp of blue smoke trailed from the chimney, and a homely touch was added by soft curtains at the window.

"Be it ever so humble," Jones said, "this is it. There was a girl with me a few years back. Woman, I should say. She's responsible for the curtains. And the flowers. Used to be more of them, but I'm not so great at flower gardening. Veggies yes, flowers no. Her name was Beverly. Blond hair, and the longest legs you ever saw. Dedicated too. Peace Corps. Save the whales. All that. Beverly thought she wanted to try the natural life. I was glad to oblige."

"What happened to her?" Malcolm's voice was weak and quavery. He had not used it in a long time.

"She moved out." Jones answered casually, as though they had been enjoying a two-way conversation all along. "Turned out the natural life wasn't quite what she thought it would be. The rain got to her for one thing. She was a San Diego girl. Never in her life saw it rain more than two days running. Up here sometimes it'll rain for a month, more or less. Doesn't bother me, but Beverly about went crazy. Then there was the baby."

"You had a baby?"

"We did. Little boy. Beverly wanted to name him Star Child, but I wouldn't go for that. I'm not that spacey. Held out for John. Honest name. Solid. Biblical, if you're into that. He'd be a couple of years younger than you now. You got a name?"

"I…" Malcolm's mind was suddenly empty, as though sucked clean by a giant vacuum. He was frightened. "I don't know."

"Doesn't matter. With only the two of us, there won't be any confusion about who I'm talking to. Back in town they'll want to know, but maybe you'll remember by then."

Jones carried the boy across the clearing to the door of the cabin. He pushed it open with his foot. Inside there were rough-hewn, comfortable-looking chairs, a table rescued from some thrift shop, sanded down and painted apple green, and a pair of army-style cots with stretched canvas on wooden frames. There was a cast-iron sink with a hand-pump for water. Along one wall was a stone fireplace with a great iron kettle simmering over the coals of a log fire. Whatever was in the kettle smelled wonderful.

"Beverly hadn't considered that living natural was going to mean no disposable diapers for John. No television to keep him occupied. No babysitter. She had to go all the way into Pinyon for the obstetrician. One day she just took him and left. Can't blame her. At least I did the kid one favour. I saved him from a life of being called Star Child."

Jones carried Malcolm into the cabin and kicked the door shut behind them. It was warm inside. The aroma from the simmering kettle wrapped around them.

"Stew," Jones said. "Turnips, zucchini, tomatoes, wild onion, plantain. Care to try some?"

Malcolm bobbed his head, then winced in sudden pain.

"First we better see what we can do about that ankle. I'll clean it up for you now. By tomorrow morning this rain will stop and we'll hike into Pinyon and get it fixed up properly."

Jones eased the boy down on to one of the cots. He brought over a basin of water and a soft cloth. Very gently he sponged the wounded ankle, keeping up a running chatter about nothing in particular.

He held the boy's leg in his strong, gentle hands and studied the torn flesh. "Looks like you've got a little infection going there," he said. "I'm going to put some stuff on it now that will sting a little. I boil it down from pine bark and a few other things. It'll clean out the infection fast.

Better than iodine for sure."

From a shelf built over the sink Jones took down a tightly corked bottle. He poured out a thick brown liquid on to a wadded cloth. The concoction smelled of pitch. He sponged it generously on the boy's wounded ankle. It did sting like fury, but Malcolm never let on that it hurt.

"That ought to get it," Jones said. He wrapped a length of clean white cloth around Malcolm's ankle and foot. He ripped one end to make long strips and tied them in a knot.

"Too tight?"

Malcolm shook his head.

"Okay. Now how about some stew?"

"I am pretty hungry."

"I'll bet you are."

Jones served up the hot stew in wooden bowls along with chunks of coarse bread. To drink there was a steaming, bitter herb tea. Malcolm ate until he could hold no more. The tea, once it was down, warmed him and made him drowsy. The big man helped him ease his shattered ankle up on to the cot, and brought a fresh khaki blanket to cover him.

"Get some sleep now, son. We've got to be up early tomorrow."

The pain in Malcolm's foot eased and gradually drained away. He relaxed, enjoying the feeling of a full belly for the first time in many days. The warmth of the cabin and the deep shadows from the dying fire, the soft splash of rain above him on the roof, all combined to lull the boy into a long, deep, untroubled sleep.