Monsters
T hey’d lost sight of the wolves at least ten miles back, yet all the devil men kept their eyes fixed on the road behind them, no one speaking as they headed south on Route 3, following the Coal River through the isolated hill country.
No one had killed him yet, so Jesse felt he just might have a chance of getting out of this scrape alive. “So,” Jesse said. “Where can I drop you and your friends off at?”
The she-devil studied him. The fire in her eyes had diminished, still holding their unnerving orange tint but not glowing as before. She pushed back the hood of her jacket, gave him a wry grin, and shook her head. Her hair was dark, matted, and greasy, cropped short, as if hacked away with a knife. Her gray skin with blotchy black patches made it difficult to gauge her age, but if Jesse had to guess he would’ve said somewhere in her late teens.
The window between the cab and the camper shell slid open and one of the devil men poked his head into the cab. He appeared to be older, his face heavily lined, late fifties perhaps, long, greasy hair and bristly, black beard. “We’ve lost them!”
“No,” corrected the devil man seated next to him. It was the tall one, one of the ones with horns and draped in bear hides. His skin, like that of the two horned monsters next to him, appeared to be covered in black paint or tar perhaps, as though he’d purposely tried to darken it. The tall devil man crouched over, trying not to bump his horns on the camper roof. “You will never lose them. Not so long as the ravens follow.” His speech was paced, a bit stilted; he sounded to Jesse like a Native American.
The woman rolled down her window; the cold wind buffeted the cab as she leaned her head out and scanned the night sky. She withdrew back in. “No sign of ’em. None that I could see no ways.”
“They are there,” the tall one said. “I feel them.”
“I don’t feel anything,” the bearded man said. “How can you be so sure?”
The tall man gave him a pitying look.
“Don’t give me that look. I hate that look.” The bearded man was silent a minute. “Well . . . what’re we going to do about them?”
“Do?” the woman said. “We got the sack. There’s only one thing we can do.”
“What?” the bearded man cried. “We’re just going to go back to the cave? But that’ll lead the monsters right to him. Not to mention right to us. Why, we’ll be trapped! ”
“We got no choice,” she insisted. “That was his command.”
“Well, then we better hope Old Tall and Ugly can get unhooked before they catch up with us, or we’re all going to die horribly.”
The creatures all fell quiet, the lone wiper beating out a squeaky rhythm as they watched the slushy road slipping away behind them in the glow of the taillights. Jesse noted the one that had been shot holding his face, blood spilling out between his fingers. He didn’t think that one would be around for much longer. After seeing those wolves, he didn’t think any of them would. “So,” Jesse put in. “Given any thought as to where I should let you guys off?”
They ignored him.
“Are we even going the right way?” the woman asked.
“How the heck should I know,” the bearded devil replied.
“Well, how about you ask Makwa.”
The man’s face wrinkled up in distaste, but he did just that and a heated discussion broke out accompanied by an arsenal of animated hand-gestures. He leaned back through the window. “Yes, we seem to be going the right way.”
“You sure?” the woman asked.
“No, I’m not sure. But Big Chief Know-It-All sure seems to think so. And when was the last time he was wrong?”
The woman shrugged.
Makwa jabbed a finger into the cab, pointed ahead to a ridgeline barely visible in the night sky.
“Yeah, we got it,” the bearded man said.
“Hey, I know where we’re at,” the woman said. “We should be coming up on the road in about a mile then.” She looked at Jesse. “You
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