The Wild

Page 11

“He did, yeah,” Jack said. “But he was half asleep even before we left.”

“Come on,” Merritt said. The big man brushed past Jack and started up the stairs, taking them two at a time with his long stride. They’d heard no gunshots, but after that initial awful scream, no more voices either.

“There are others staying here,” Jack whispered.

“It’s not them I care about,” Merritt said without turning around. He was at the head of the staircase now, and turning left along the corridor that led to their room. Jack kept up with him, heart thumping, senses heightened, and he tingled all over. Merritt and Jack paused outside the closed door to their room. No other doors were open.

“Maybe it was just someone…,” Jack whispered, raising his eyebrows with a shrug.

“Couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Could you?”

Jack shook his head.

Merritt tapped the barrel of his pistol against the door. “Jim?” There was no answer. He pressed his ear to the door, listened, glanced at Jack, and shook his head.

“Maybe we should—,” Jack began, but Merritt stood back and kicked at the door. Jack backed away and let the big man kick.

The door swung open—it had not been latched or locked, it seemed—and bounced off the wall, springing back and giving them only a brief view of what lay on the bed.

Merritt gasped, but Jack was through the door within a couple of heartbeats. All me, he thought, this is all me, all my fault, my stupid fault for getting involved. But then he realized with a gush of relief that Jim was not dead after all. He moved slowly, turning his head to the left and back to the right again. Blood was splashed across his pillow, and one hand was raised in a warding-off gesture, his little finger bent backward at an unnatural angle. There was a gash above his left eye from which the blood still flowed.

Jack looked quickly around the large room, saw no one waiting in the shadows, then advanced on the bed. “Jim,” he said, and his friend opened his good eye.

Jim gurgled something. His eye went wide.

From behind him, Jack heard the terrible meaty impact of wood against flesh and bone. Someone grunted, and by the time he’d turned around, Merritt was slumping against the open door. Archie stood behind him in the doorway, and he grinned at Jack as he brought the wooden club down on the back of Merritt’s head one more time.

“Evenin’, Jack,” William said, slipping through the doorway beside Archie.

“Son of a—” Jack pointed his pistol, but already he knew he could not shoot. William did not carry a gun, only a wooden club, the same as Archie. And in the darkened corridor behind them, more shapes shuffled and came closer.

Perhaps if he’d known what was to come, he would have fired. Shot William, killed Archie, and then tried to fight his way through the men behind them. Perhaps he should have.

But right then all he knew was the present. So he dropped the gun on the bed and put up his fists, as ready to fight as he’d ever been before.

Archie laughed and dropped his bloodied club, balling his fist. William’s smile was as cool and haunting as ever. Two more men came into the room—bad men, wild men, with the glint of brutality in their eyes and the scars of their rough existence marking their skin.

“Come on, then,” Jack said.

And so they came.

“Come on, then,” Jack said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ONLY THE WILD

HE WAS LOST IN ANOTHER terrible storm. Snow swirled and raged heavier than he had ever thought possible. He could feel it pelting his skin, like shards of ice instead of soft flakes, and when he tried to breathe in, snow invaded his throat and lungs. It froze him on the inside, while outside he could feel little. The smell of muck and horses pervaded the air, but he was motionless in this whiteout, and there was not a sound to be heard. This is the true white silence, he thought, and then between gusts of snow he caught sight of a familiar shape. The wolf was running toward him, bounding through snow so deep that the creature all but disappeared with each jump. It ran and howled—though he could not hear it—but it never seemed to draw any closer.

A curtain of snow obscured his vision, and he felt so alone.

A steady, low bumping began, so slight that he was not certain whether he was feeling or hearing it. And though he tried to walk, look around, see his hands, it was only his awareness that acknowledged the blizzard, not his body. Dreaming, he thought, but even that did not feel quite right.

He caught sight of the wolf again, fighting its way through the snow. It seemed closer than before, but still he could not hear it. He tried to shout, but it could not hear him, either. There was just the snow, and that steady thump…thump…thump….

It was impact, and noise. And beneath the noise there were smaller thuds, coming from farther away but adding to the rhythms that seemed to be assaulting his body and senses.

The snow started to turn brown. It melted away, taking the blank landscape beyond with it, and the sound and feel of the impacts became more defined.

He heard the loud howl of a wolf, so familiar and real that he almost felt as if he could grab hold of it. He smelled horse, opened his eyes, and could see three men ahead of him, walking toward a thickly forested hillside. The horse to which Jack had been strapped ambled after them. There was no snow on the ground; that terrible blizzard remained in his skull.