Page 98 of Coyote

The moment my feet hit the open flat, the wind came off the desert straight into my face. Past the mouth of the pass, the desert was flat and empty.

I looked for tracks. In this dark, my eyes were only good for the big shapes: the dark clumps of mesquite, the pale spikes of the yucca. I crouched instead, low enough that the ground came up under my one good eye, and I worked the pale things: limestone and caliche crust, anything that would hold a mark and give it back.

I found him out past the mouth of the pass. A drop of dark blood was on a pale limestone rock. I touched it with my good finger. It came away thick and heavy and still tacky, and it wasn't mine.

Zaroff.

Beside the blood, his bare heel had torn the caliche where it slipped on the gravel, a white scrape in the gray crust.

I dropped into a long stride, the one I never had to think about. I kept my head low, my eyes sweeping the ground ahead of me, my ears tuned to the wind.

The brush was thick here. The catclaw hooked into the raw skin of my thighs and let go and hooked in again. The pain in my hand was a steady, rhythmic thrum that matched the beat of my heart, keeping me awake, keeping me sharp.

I followed the trail east, toward the big dry wash where the red dirt gave way to deep sand.

This was the place where the radio signal died. Zaroff had run other men to pieces down here. The wash was deep, its banks over my head, lined with thick mesquite that blocked out the starlight.

I found his footprints in the sand. They were ragged, the strides getting shorter, the left heel dragging deep. He'd hit a patch of prickly pear; he'd broken the pads open, pale green and wet, and dark smears marked the sand where the long yellow spines had gone into his feet and come back out with him.

You're tired, aren't you? I thought. You've never had to run without your boots. You've never had to run with your own blood filling your throat.

The sound coming up the wash wasn't a runner's. It was the sound of a dying animal. A wet, rattling gasp that came every time his chest expanded, his ruined hand scraping against the gravel as he tried to drag himself up the steep bank of the wash.

I stood in the deep sand, my head tilted back, listening. Then I came up the bend where the wash narrowed there and the clay went to slick rock.

The starlight caught him. He was on his knees at the base of the slick rock wall, his good hand clawing at the loose dirt, trying to find a handhold to pull himself up out of the wash. He was shivering so hard his bones seemed to rattle under his skin.

His bare feet were swollen black, covered in dirt and long white cactus spines driven into his flesh. His right arm was tucked against his belly. He heard me, but he didn't turn around. He just stopped clawing at the dirt, his forehead pressing against the cold, red clay of the bank.

I walked up behind him. The sand was cold beneath my feet. The pain in my splinted hand had gone numb, leaving nothing but a dull, heavy ache.

"What's your name?" I said.

It took him a while to find the breath for it. "You know my name."

"That's the one you gave yourself. I want the other one before I kill you."

He turned his head enough to get one eye on me. He was going to keep it, and he wanted me to know that he was keeping it. "You've got my hand," he said. "You'll get my teeth. You don't get that."

I reached down and grabbed him by his gray hair, pulling his head back until the starlight hit his throat.

"You're the stock now," I said.

He tried to scream, but the sound was just a wet bubble of blood that popped on his lips. His good hand came up, fingers clawing at my face, nails catching the raw skin of my cheek. I didn't flinch. Nothing he had left in him was worth flinching for.

I leaned down and bit down on his throat.

Zaroff's body locked rigid under me, his back arching up off the sand, his good hand clawing at my back with frantic, useless strength.

I didn't let go. I bit deeper, my jaws locking onto the gristle and the windpipe under it, feeling the frantic, dying pulse of his heart through my teeth. I tore my head sideways, and the skin gave way with a sharp, wet rip.

He sagged. His body fell back into the sand, his head rolling sideways, his eyes wide and fixed on the stars. I spat the blood out onto his chest. It looked black in the starlight.

Then I sat in the sand beside him until my breath slowed, the blood dripping from my chin onto my knees. My hand was throbbing again, the pain returning with a vengeance now that the run was over.

When he was dead, I reached down with my good left hand and found a wedge of limestone in the gravel with a thin edge on it.

I forced my fingers into his mouth. His jaw hung slack and heavy, and it fought me anyway. I used the stone to chip at the base of his front teeth.