As they moved along the wash, Wayman’s flash picked out their path. Trace kept his moving around the hillocks to either side and along the path behind them. Once, he caught a hint of movement, but when he backtracked with the light, the thing was gone. Just like his interest in the meteor shower overhead.
Though he kept seeing imaginary bloody bodies on the sandy wash bottom, images put in his head by the demon that was hunting them, they made it back to the small tent near 82—the main road through Dickens—and made a small fire from dried wood they found in the wash. Then they zipped themselves inside. It was stupid, but the thin layer of tent fabric made Trace feel safer.
He thought he wouldn’t sleep, but he did. And he woke the next morning just at dawn to find himself alone, the tent unzipped, Wayman’s sleeping bag empty, but still warm. And his friend’s high-pitched scream on the air.
Trace tore out of his sleeping bag and outside. Following the sound of Wayman’s screams. Knowing they were different from Wayman’s regular screams. This scream was real. Wayman was in danger. And he remembered the sight of the golden silver eyes caught in his flashlight’s beam.
He raced down the hillock, his sneakers untied, the laces flying. Glad he’d slept in them. Not sure why he’d think about that when his friend was in trouble. Racing toward the screams. Which suddenly dropped awayto a gurgling whimper. Trace stumbled on the untied laces, scratching his hand and arm in a long straight line, but picking up a stick as he righted himself.He’d forgot his gun. Dayum. His gun... Daddy’d kill him for losing it.
But he didn’t go back for the shotgun.
Trace rounded the small hillock to his left. And saw the bloody mess that was his friend, stretched out on the bloody sand of the wash. The spotted cat was lying beside Wayman’s weakly moving body. Trace screamed and waved his arms, racing toward the danger. He waved the stick and shouted scripture to make the demon cat go away. It wasn’t a power scripture like his daddy always used in his drunken sermons, but the only thing he could think of. “Jesus wept! Jesus wept!Jesus wept!” Waving the stick. Screaming out his fear and rage.
The spotted cat leaped away.
Stopped. Growled at Trace. And Trace turned from Wayman and raced after the huge cat. Instead of running, the cat leaped at him. Punched-thumped-walloped down on Trace’s chest, his massive cat-face hanging over Trace, bloody with the blood of his friend.
All the life and energy drained out of him. Staring into the crazed golden silver eyes. He peed his pants. Dropped the stick.
The cat bit down onto Trace’s shoulder. And shook him hard.
Then it jumped away, leaving Trace. And Wayman. Alone.
Trace rolled over, his arm hanging useless, and half crawled to Wayman, lying so still on the ground. His friend’s chest still struggled to move and he made a whistling sound with each breath. Trace slid his good arm under Wayman’s neck and lifted his friend. “I’m here. The cat’s gone. We’re safe. We’re safe. We’re gonna be okay.”
But Trace was lying. Wayman was dying. He knew it. There was so much blood. Trace had never seen what people looked like when they were dying. But most of his friend’s belly was gone, leaving a gaping hole where his insides used to be. The cat had eaten into Wayman.
“Wayman. I gotcha. I ain’t gonna leave you.”
Wayman lifted his hand and dropped it onto Trace’s arm, his fingers curling around Trace’s wrist. He whispered, “Devil cat. Jist like your daddy said.”
“Wayman—”
“I’m gonna be checking out God’s Big Bang Fart.” Wayman made a sound like crying or laughing or both. And he stopped breathing. And he died.
—
Trace somehow managed to get the wagon to Wayman. Somehow got the body of his best friend rolled onto it. Abandoning the tent and the bikes and even his shotgun, Trace somehow made it back to 82, pulling the wagon and the body of his friend along the dirt side of the road. Pulling the small handle. Wayman’s legs dragging. The wheels bumping along. Grinding in the soil beside the road. No one passed. The main thoroughfare was empty.
Without his bike to pull the special wagon, the dirt street leading to Dickens seemed forever away. He bumped down along the road, pulling the wagon. Tripping on the laces of his shoes. By the time the sun was overhead, flies had started to gather in the ground-up meat that was his friend’s belly.
He’d forgot to pick up the water. He was salt-caked and drier than a stone, walking like a demon-zombie, when a white pickup truck pulled to a stop beside him on 82. Someone started talking at him. Loud. And then more people showed up, all talking. And more cars appeared out of the hazy heat. Trace kept trying to pull the wagon with Wayman on it, back to town. And kept trying. Kept trying. His daddy stopped him.
His daddy, stinking of whiskey, started yelling, shouting scripture. Someone pushed Daddy away. A woman gave him bottles of water. Poured some over his body to cool him down.
The sheriff drove up and started asking questions. Trace tried to answer but he couldn’t think straight. He was hot. Maybe feverish. He couldn’t even cry for his friend. His piece-of-meat dead friend.
His mama raced up, shouting, “Trace Quaid Oakum! What have you done?” And then she saw him, touched his head, grabbed him up, saying, “Oh my God. Baby.” She cussed the sheriff out and cradled Trace in her arms, calling him her baby. Forcing him to drink more water. Mama’s hugs were the best thing he ever remembered feeling. Trace melted into her, his skin aching, burning up.
While she coddled him, the local men gathered rifles and shotguns and tried to pinpoint where the attack took place. Someone brought in atracking dog and the men jogged back down 82, following his trail. Mama took him to the house they stayed at sometimes and tucked him into bed. She held his hand for a while and then she said she had to go with the church ladies to make sandwiches for the trackers, and brew up sweet tea.
Trace curled into his bed, stinking of sweat, feeling sick. Burning up and maybe dying. But he didn’t care. Wayman was dead.
Eventually Mama came in to bring him some soup and noticed that he was sick. She pulled off his shirt and found the bite mark. It was all puffy and swollen by then, his arm mostly useless. Mama started hollering and the church ladies mighta seen him naked. He didn’t really remember. But they put him into Mrs. Jefferies’s car and they took him to the clinic in Spur.
They said it was a miracle he survived. A miracle he didn’t lose use of his arm. Even more of a miracle that he was mostly healed on the day they buried Wayman. His daddy gave a ranting drunken eulogy and sermon about demons and devil cats and evil and the hero who had scared off the monster and then brought his friend home. Except Trace knew he wasn’t a hero. A hero woulda saved Wayman, not let him die. But the adults kept saying different. And Wayman’s mama hugged onto Trace all through the service and burial, squeezing him the whole time, crying.
—
