CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Himbradda led his small band down through the Sonoran Desert plains, skirting its eastern edge. They were many days ahead of the main body of the People. The People were returning to Picacho Peak to start their ceremonies again. The Professor had ordered the People to return to their most sacred place. Picacho Peak. So Himbradda had been sent ahead. To see if the Dragon still lived there.

Himbradda was very afraid, had always been afraid. The woman that delivered him into the world didn’t even know she was pregnant until he appeared nine months after she had been raped one morning, as the People grazed on wild beans and desert peyote. She lay under the hot morning sun, being raped in the rough yellow grass as she had been many times before and many times after.

When Himbradda arrived she carried him with her. Because of his withered left arm, he was accepted as part of the People and followed in the wake of their wanderings. He was fed on wild beans, pecans, uncooked coyote, and sometimes the warriors’ peyote. He even tasted the meat of other children, perfect unblemished children. Children not of the People. Once those children reached the bottom of the drop below Picacho Peak, then all of the People could take what could be grabbed and torn away.

Himbradda had been raped and he had raped. He had been hit and he had hit. He had been beaten and he had beaten. If he had known how to count, the number twenty would have represented the number of children he had begotten, the number thirty-two for the amount of people he had killed, and the number fifteen for how old he was.

Regardless of his withered left arm and crooked teeth, he was almost beautiful. He had a strong build and a taut hulking physique. Long hair hung over one of his green eyes. His good arm rippled with muscles at the biceps, triceps, and forearm. In his good hand he carried, dragging mostly by the long iron bar, a parking meter that had been taken from the hot ruins of Phoenix. Most of the thirty-two dead had met the parking meter.

Nu-ah, who dragged himself everywhere because of the missing legs he’d never known, eased down from his watch-place atop the tall sign that still read GASOLINE. He crawled quickly across the parking lot to Himbradda, who sat in the shady petals of an exploded propane tank. Himbradda felt absently at the running sore underneath the hair of his scalp, while Nu-ah made whispers that indicated a lone man came toward them on the road from Phoenix.

The People had known Phoenix. It was the northern extent of their ranging, and some winters found them rooting around its slag heaps and twisted metal, finding bits of glass for their weapons. It was then that the sores appeared along with the sickness. They had stayed too long and now it was time to head south, all the way into Mexico.

A lone man was prey but seldom encountered. If he continued down this road, thought Himbradda, then the man would reach Picacho Peak and the Dragon. That would make Himbradda’s work easier. To see if the man brought out the Dragon.

He grunted that Nu-ah should return to his hiding place and watch the man. This was the last thing Nu-ah expected. He’d hoped, because of his sharp eyes, he might get a piece of the man’s liver when the small band took the loner. A reward for finding him among the burning brilliance of the desert floor.

Nu-ah hesitated. Was he being left out of the kill?

Himbradda swiveled the head of his parking meter, grinding it in the faded asphalt for Nu-ah to understand.

Once Nu-Ah was back in his place Himbradda stood up shouldering his club. He tucked his withered left hand into his torn overalls. The overalls had been pulled off the body of a man in Mexico, after the People had overrun and destroyed a small settlement of salvagers. Himbradda grunted for the others to follow.

Eating the man and then having their woman in the dust of the highway afterward would have been a pleasant afternoon. But the Professor said that Himbradda must know if the Dragon still lives.

Gutch and Ha rose to their feet as Himbradda loped off into the desert behind the sign, looking for a crevice they might hide in.

Gutch pulled on the rope he wore about his waist, dragging their girl to her feet. It had been good of the Professor to give them a woman for the journey; otherwise Himbradda would have attacked them all. It was good that they could have her whenever they wanted. Even if she was blind and had to be led with the rope everywhere. He pulled savagely on the old tow rope wound about her neck. Fresh blood ran down her naked sunburned body. But she gave no cry, showed no intelligence, and only followed them into the desert waste beyond the remains of the station.

The Old Man reached the wild orchard of pecans at nightfall. He didn’t like the place. But even more so he didn’t like the violence of the old gas station on the other side of the highway.

Looks like a war took place there.

But the orchard was not much better. The sky turned a burnt orange as the sun disappeared, and the silhouettes of the trees looked like fingers clutching at the last of the day. Large crows roosted in the trees and the Old Man was not comforted by them.

He built a small fire and roasted the two snakes he’d found on the highway, eating a little and saving the rest for the next day.

You will run out of water soon if you don’t find some.

It was dark now, and still he could see the fingers of the trees clutching at the night sky. He thought about moving on, but then remembered the wolves and thought he might get up into the trees if they returned.

He lay down but it took him a long time to get to sleep and when he did he woke often. Toward the deepest part of the night, the crows burst out in terror and the Old Man heard them ‘caw, caw, cawing’ angrily. They sounded like a woman who was angry or crying out in pain.

He lay in the dark for a long time after the crows had stopped. In the silence, the memory of the crows’ anger came back to him, and he thought he faintly heard a woman’s cry, but only once and so little of it, that upon reflection he wondered if he’d heard it at all.

At dawn he was glad to be away from the place. He calculated that he might reach the base of the peak by midmorning and so he walked fast, chewing bits of snake as he went.

Himbradda followed the Old Man, leaving Ha to lead the woman, and Nu-ah to crawl on his trail as he shadowed the Old Man who seemed in a hurry to meet the Dragon. The body of Gutch, his head beaten to a pulp, lay in the crevice where they had spent the night. He had been at the girl while Himbradda tried to get close to the campfire of the Old Man. The crows, hearing her cries as Gutch worked at her had almost given him away and Himbradda had fled in terror at the ruckus of the evil birds. Himbradda’s terror turned to anger, and when he made it back to the crevice, he bashed in the skull of the sleeping Gutch and had the girl for reasons he knew not.

Himbradda, crouching in the soft morning light, followed the Old Man, who arrived soon at the most sacred birthplace of the People and the lair of the Dragon.