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  "Hey." The trucker prodded the guy in the ribs with the toe of his boot. Likely a couple of cracked ribs there, at the least. Maybe the new pain would bring the guy around again. "Hey, you with us, buddy?" Another poke. "Knock-knock, anybody home?"

  He didn't get an answer. The eyes stayed closed, and the guy's shallow breathing slid over the red wetness filling his mouth.

  "Well, hell…" The trucker dug out his pocket knife, bent down and cut the rope around the man's ankles. The guy's feet-one bare except for a dirty white sock, the other with a scuffed Adidas running shoe on-flopped disjointedly, as though they were held to the rest of the body by nothing but the jeans legs.

  "Come on, buddy. Let's go for a walk." He pulled the guy upright by the arms, managing to get the body's limp weight onto his own shoulders. He held the wrists in front of his chest, with the arms draped across his neck. The guy's face, open-mouthed, with a string of red spittle dangling out, lolled against his head. He carried the weight toward the truck, leaving behind him his own bootprints and two parallel lines from the guy's dragging feet.

  In the Peterbilt's cab, the body slumped against the angle of the seat and the righthand door. The trucker got in on the other side and slid behind the wheel. He could see some of the guy's injuries better now. Somebody had whaled on his head with what looked to have been a steel bar; the straight imprint was plain along the side of the guy's skull. That was what had broken open the scalp and left the hair matted and spiked with blood. If they'd wanted to, whoever had done it could just have easily taken off the whole top of the guy's head. They must have wanted to leave him alive, or just dying slowly, and then dump him out here: the high desert got cold enough at night, even at this time of year, to have finished him off. Not a fun way to go.

  The guy was moaning, his face contorting after a series of quick, gulping breaths. The trucker watched him, then rooted through the stuff behind the seat and came up with a thermos bottle. The coffee in it was over a day old and stone cold, but it was something wet at least. He poured the plastic cup half full and leaned with it toward the guy.

  "Here you go, ace." He held the cup to the guy's mouth, pulling him forward with a hand at the back of the head. "Try and get a little of this down."

  Some of the coffee dribbled out of the corners of the guy's mouth, but the muscles of his throat clenched, working the rest along. Then he coughed, shoulders jerking, and the last mouthful welled over his chin and onto the torn green shirt. The head slumped back, but the panting breath had slowed and deepened.

  The trucker screwed the cup back onto the thermos and set it down between the seats. He dropped the Peterbilt into gear and eased it back onto the road.

  They had hardly picked up any speed at all when the guy opened his eyes-slowly, as though they were working free of stitches. He winced as he turned his face toward the trucker.

  "Where…" The guy could barely speak. The voice sounded like an old man's. "Where we going…"

  The trucker grunted. "Where the hell do you think?" He glanced over at him. "I'm taking you to a hospital."

  The guy's body stiffened, the spine coming up from the seat and shoving his shoulder blades back. Underneath the dried blood, his face whitened with the sudden effort. He shook his head, teeth gritting against the pain. "No-no hospital-"

  He couldn't believe he'd heard that. "What're you talking about? You're in a world of hurt, fella. You need some taking care of."

  The guy leaned forward, with agonized slowness. He twisted around so that he could reach down between the seats. The trucker saw that the guy's right arm and hand weren't working too well; they flopped loosely as the guy reached for the thermos bottle. He managed to one-hand the cup off, then the plug at the bottle's opening. He got the bottle to his mouth and gulped at what was left inside, a mix of blood and coffee running in rivulets down his throat. The empty bottle fell to the floor as he collapsed back against the seat.

  The trucker looked over at him. The road was a perfect straight line, nothing between here and the low horizon, so he could keep his eye on the guy for several seconds. "I ain't shittin' ya, man. You need a doctor."

  A smile, or the lopsided fragment of one, came up on the guy's face. Even a little laugh. "I am a doctor."

  He looked at the guy for a moment longer, then turned back to the road beyond the windshield.

  TWO

  The hawk had watched the hurt thing being taken away. That had been hours ago-nothing to the hawk's slow patience-when the sun had still been slanting across the world. Now the hills had started to turn red, sinking toward black, and the seeing of things was getting harder.

  Nothing was left on the ground below the wire except the scuffed-up earth, the traces of the thing's impact on the ground and then its being dragged away to the road. There was still the smell of blood and meat, though, soaked into the dust where it had lain.

  Something, a loping four-legged shape, came out of the rocks at the edge of the low hills. It snuffled head-down at the discolored soil, the long teeth in its muzzle bared as it caught the scent of what had been there. Others like it were back in the rocks' hidden places, ears pricked for any sound other than the wind rising.

  The animal looked up at the hawk. For a few seconds, the two carnivores' eyes met, blank gold coins above, red dots of fire below, the reflections of the sun burning behind the hills.

  Then the hawk flapped away from the pole, turning above the shadowed ground. Its hunting was over for the day. The others could begin now.

  ***

  He woke for little bits of time. Not really waking, not sleeping, but just drifting in and out of a blackness where the pain didn't go away but became something endurable, a red tidal motion timed to the slow beat of his pulse.

  He knew he was in a truck, a big rattling diesel kind. He remembered somebody lifting, carrying him up into it, a long way from the ground. The same person was behind the wheel now, and the noise of the engine and the wind against the glass told him they were moving. Going somewhere-he didn't know. When he'd opened his eyes, he'd been able to focus for only a couple of seconds, just long enough to make out a face darkened to creased leather below one of those hick-looking billed caps. Then the double vision had come, the face blurring and splitting and dancing around with everything else inside the small space of the truck. He'd had to close his eyes and go back into the soft dark.

  Back in there… the pain came over in a slow wave, pulling him under. He let go, watching himself disappear. Then that part was gone as well.

  ***

  Harley and his buddy would be working away at the pit mine-the trucker knew it. Both of them liked to work, liked to have sweat pouring down their shirtless backs, rivulets trickling through the dust thick on their necks and forearms. The only other thing they liked to do-that he knew about-was go someplace where they could get shit-faced on cold beer, to make up for all the body fluids they'd lost out in the sun. And to make up for the time they'd lost, when they'd been in the can.

  The pit mine was a hole in the ground. With a tin shack and piles of rusting equipment up on the top level and down in the hole. Tons of stuff that was why Harley and his buddy were out here, and why he came dragging out here with his rig two times a week. As he steered the Peterbilt along the curving dirt track that led off the main road, he saw a hoisting tower at the edge of the pit sag, lean, then come toppling down, raising a cloud of dirt.

  Harley's beater, an old Jimmy pickup with bald tires, was parked by the shack. His buddy was in the little rag of shade it threw, with a welding mask over his face, working with a cutting torch on a pile of scrap. The torch hissed and sent sparks popping over the dirt.

  The trucker pulled the Peterbilt around by the shack. As he pushed the door on his side open, he saw Harley-big, hairy; both he and his buddy looked like badly shaved apes-come ambling over from the wreckage of the hoisting tower. Harley had a sledgehammer dangling from his meaty fist.

  He jumped from the cab's last step to the grou
nd. "Check it out," he said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

  Bristle-jawed Harley stood and looked at him for a moment, then walked past; he dropped the hammer and mounted a couple of steps up the side of the cab so he could look in its open door.

  "Shit!" Harley jumped back down. His face had been red and sweaty before; now it blackened with anger as he confronted the trucker. "Who the fuck's that?"

  He shrugged. "Found 'im. Out on the road."

  Harley's buddy, with the welder's mask pushed up on top of his head, came around from the other side of the shack and looked in the truck. He was smiling, gaps showing in his yellow teeth, when he came over to them.

  "Looks like somebody doesn't like him too much." Harley's buddy scratched his bare chest, grinning away.

  "Shit. Jesus fucking Christ." Harley shook his head. "What the hell did you bring him here for?"

  "What was I supposed to do?" The trucker gestured toward the Peterbilt and the slumped figure visible inside. "Leave him out there?"

  Harley put his hands on his hips and nodded. "Yeah, actually. That's exactly what you should've done. This stupid fucker, whoever he is, he gets his ass in a jam, it's no skin off our noses."

  These assholes… The trucker kept his face impassive as he listened to Harley. How the hell did I get hooked up with them?

  "Why do you think somebody like that gets dumped off in the middle of nowhere? Huh? Tell me."

  The trucker shrugged.

  Harley looked over his shoulder, then back to the trucker. "He probably burned somebody in some fuckin' dope deal. So he gets what he deserves, the stupid shit."

  The other ape laughed, just thinking about that.

  "Yeah, but… come on…"

  "Don't give me that shit." Harley's face looked as if it were going to explode. "I don't want to hear it. What the hell do you think we're doing out here, man? We got thirty, forty tons of scrap to break up and get hauled out of here before somebody finds out what we're doing. This is illegal, man. You know what that means?"

  "I know what it means." The shit he had to take from this guy; it wasn't worth it.

  "No, you don't. It doesn't just mean that if we get popped, you don't get your share of the profits. It means that if we get popped, me and my buddy here, we go back in. And I've been in before, and I don't want to go in again-you got me? We get popped, the D.A. hits me with the fucking bitch-you know? Fuck, man, I'll get fucking seven just for breaking my fucking parole. And you want to haul some beat-up, dying dope dealer in here? You're out of your fucking mind."

  "So what the hell am I supposed to do with him, then? Look, the guy's gonna die anyway-"

  Harley cut him off. "Hey, I don't give a fuck. So let him die somewhere else, okay? Just get rid of him. Haul him back out to where you found him…"

  ***

  The voices woke him. Shouting, somewhere in the distance.

  He managed to drag his eyes open, a slit that let in stinging light. His face was against glass, the side window of the truck's cab. He turned his head-slowly; there was a rod of dull fire under his spine-until he could see where the voices came from.

  Through the open door of the cab, he saw them. The man who had been driving the truck, who'd picked him up. And another one, with a red, sweating face. That one's voice was louder, angrier. He could just make out the words.

  … get rid of him… haul him back out… found him…

  The voice twisted in his ear, echoing. At the same time, the faces blurred and doubled, the truckdriver's and the red, angry one. He couldn't see them anymore. He closed his eyes, and part of him, the small part that heard and remembered, drifted in night over a blind world. The darkness welled beneath him, in synch with the heavy tide of his pulse, carrying him farther from the earth.

  Farther away. The last thing, before there was nothing.

  … get rid of him… The echo… rid…

  ***

  He looked at Harley in disgust.

  "Oh yeah, that's a great idea." The trucker's own anger was starting to rise. He shook his head, one corner of his mouth twisting up. "With my goddamn tire tracks rolling right by there-"

  "Well, just dump him anywhere, then." Harley gestured off to the distance, to the dirt road behind the truck. "Some place out of sight. Find some flat rock to stick him under." He rubbed the dust from his hands onto his trousers, already filthy. "And then get your ass back here. We got plenty ready to load up." He turned away and walked toward the metal shack.

  The trucker stared after him. Harley's buddy was already plopped down in the little bit of shade, working on a beer he'd taken from the cooler inside. He handed it up to Harley, who guzzled it nearly empty, his red-creased throat beating with each swallow.

  Fuck these guys. For the hundredth time, the trucker wondered why he'd let himself get hooked up with them. Fuckin' yardbirds. He turned on his heel and headed for the Peterbilt.

  ***

  Now it was dark outside as well: he could tell even without opening his eyes. The sun must have set. Under the edge of his eyelids he could just make out the green, spectral glow of the truck's dashboard lights, making the driver's hands into skeletonlike forms clutching the wheel. He squeezed his eyes closed tight, the corner of his forehead against the cold, vibrating glass of the side window. Black inside…

  He came to again when he felt the truck come to a stop. Or it had been still for a while; he had no way of knowing. Except that the driver was gone from behind the wheel, leaving him alone in the dim, green-lit space.

  The pain had gotten worse. Every breath brought a stab of fire around his chest. The one arm, his right, was useless; he couldn't move it from where the weight of his body pinned it against the door. That had been the first place he'd gotten hit, when he'd raised up his forearm to ward off the blow swinging down on him. A metal pipe, just under three feet long, with one end wrapped in electrician's tape for a better grip; he'd seen it before, propped up in a corner by the front door of Aitch's apartment, and had suspected what it was for. Now he knew.

  The double vision had let up for a moment. He could see outside the truck, through the window his cheek rested against. Some big shape blotted out the bottom part of the night sky, closer than the low hills and made up of straight lines. The truck's headlights weren't aimed toward it, but enough of their glow leaked to the side that he could make out the size of the building, a big one, with a double row of windows. A couple of the windows on the top story were broken out, leaving jagged teeth glinting with the moon's cold blue light.

  He saw the truck driver, or somebody, moving around the front of the building, a human shape stepping off what looked like a covered porch running across the front of the building. The man walked back toward the truck.

  He closed his eyes and waited. He was too tired to care where the hell this was.

  ***

  "There you go, buddy." The trucker had stripped the blankets off the narrow bed in the Peterbilt's sleeper and wrapped the guy up in them. He'd laid him down by a section of wall where the windows were all still securely boarded over and the chilling night wind couldn't get through, or at least not much of it. An angle of moonlight reached down the big flight of stairs at the far end. The guy's face, white underneath the bruises and crusted blood, gazed up at the old lobby's ceiling, breath dragging in and out of his open mouth.

  The trucker peeled off his denim jacket, wadded it up and slid it under the back of the guy's head. The unfocused eyes screwed down in pain, then relaxed but still stayed closed as he lowered the fragile skull onto the makeshift pillow.

  "There's water in here now." He set the thermos bottle down, with the plastic cup, already filled, next to it. He'd dipped the water up from a stagnant puddle he'd stepped in outside. But it was better than leaving the guy with nothing at all. "Right here, where you can get to it. Okay?"

  The guy managed to move his head. "Yeah… thanks…" His voice sounded a million miles away.

  If this sorry bastard didn't wa
nt to go to a hospital, the trucker figured, it was no skin off his ass. It would've been less trouble if he'd just left the guy at the side of the road, out where he'd found him. Taking him in to an emergency room, he might have had to come up with a cover story about why he was working his rig out in that butt-end of nowhere. Especially since this guy hadn't gotten so banged up by falling out of bed. And he didn't feel like explaining to the police his little business with the two cons at the pit mine. So if this fellow wanted to take his chances without benefit of medical attention… that might save everybody a lot of trouble.

  "Hope you make it." He rubbed his chin as he looked down at the guy. "Look, uh… I got a good idea why you didn't want to go to a hospital. You're not the first dumb sonuvabitch somebody's found out there like that. You're just the first one-least that I ever came across-who was still alive."

  The guy tried to raise his head; he grimaced, teeth clenched, and let the back of his skull hit the wadded-up jacket. He sucked his breath in through his teeth.

  "Yeah… well…" The words barely crawled out. "Whatever…"

  The trucker shook his head.

  "I gotta take off now." With the toe of his boot he pushed the thermos closer to the guy's hand. "I'll send somebody around when it's light, to check up on you."

  He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing from the bare wood floor. He wondered what would be left of the guy by the time he came this way again.

  ***

  The truck rumbled away; Mike heard the grinding of its gears as it headed down whatever road had brought him here.