Darkness providing cover, Gray walked downhill. Every yard of ground was an effort. The burns were rapidly sapping his strength. His thirst was an all-consuming craving. His mouth and throat were sawdust. He could not generate saliva and could not swallow. Thirst was deadening him to all else in the bowl. If he could not quench his thirst, Gray's judgment — the only thing keeping him alive — would be impaired, and he would soon begin acting irrationally and dangerously.
He moved around boulders and trees, the rifle now a burden. No longer did it lead him and encourage him. He staggered but caught himself against a lodgepole pine. When his moccasin kicked a rock downhill he paused, listening, but could hear only the scrape of his throat as it tried to swallow. He knew he might be making many sounds that would signal the Russian, but the pain and thirst were dampening his hearing. He stumbled on, turning more east toward the mouth of the bowl.
The shallow pool was there, the small spring that was Black Bear Creek's headwater. Gray made his way toward it, brushing the undergrowth too loudly, walking in too straight a line, letting his footfalls sound, all careless. Gray felt in himself the beginning of apathy, an indifference and impassivity brought about by his burns and thirst. If he let this new and unbidden pulse from his brain go unchecked, he would die in the bowl. But these were all weak thoughts. He needed water.
He moved toward the pool, through a patch of field mustard and balsam root, and then in a giddy rush of sensation he could smell the water, almost feel the cool liquid on his lips and tongue. He heard the ripple of a thin stream of water rolling over rocks. Predators from frogs to cougars know to lie in wait at a pool of water, and Trusov was nothing if not a predator. Forty yards from the pool, Gray lowered himself to the ground and once again tried to push aside the pain and thirst to focus on the pool and the surrounding brush and grass.
He waited, searching and listening, the pool all the while enticing him with the scent and sound of water to come forward. He waited, smothered by pain, fighting to fasten his attention on the pool.
He whispered, "It's okay, Dad."
He clamped his jaw. His father's voice had just asked about the south fence. Was it in good repair after the storm? A voice Gray had not heard in years had spoken to him, as clearly as if his father had been sitting beside him. Gray clamped his eyes shut for a moment. He had begun hallucinating. He was now fighting the Russian and his own mind.
He waited thirty minutes. He could no longer be certain of his own conclusions, but he did not think anyone was near the pool. He gripped his rifle and crawled forward, across the pine needles, then onto moss at the pool's edge. He could see only vague black outlines of a tree or two, and the inky black water.
He planted his hands on the edge of the pool, and one hand pressed onto a small, soft form. He jerked his hand away, then felt for it again. He brought up a dead salamander. Gray held it close to his eyes to try to determine what had killed it, but then tossed it aside.
He lowered his head to the water, about to drink when he saw another dead salamander, this one floating on the surface of the pool.
Gray carefully touched the water, and it was cool and promising. But when he rubbed his finger and thumb together, his skin felt soapy. His jaw opened involuntarily. Despair made him sag, and his head almost went into the water before he could fight it back. To be sure, he dipped a finger into the water and brought several drops to his mouth. The water stung his tongue, and he spit it out.
He knew what Trusov had done. Lye and fat are combined to make soap. Trusov had dumped lye into the pool, and the slick, soapy feeling on Gray's fingers had resulted from the lye quickly working on the skin there. The water was poison, not meant to kill Gray but to deprive him of water, to weaken him.
Gray gripped his rifle and backed away from the pool. Dampness clouded his vision, and he paused to wipe at his eye. He was losing. His father spoke again. Owen Gray ignored him this time. He did not need his father to tell him he was not going to make it out alive.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nikolai Trusov stalked all night, traveling counterclockwise in the bowl, making no more than fifty yards an hour, trying again to find Gray's scent. But he did not. Several times he had to blot away blood from his forehead with a sleeve. The shock of the wound was gone. His strength had returned. He used the night to try to cross Gray's trail.
He succeeded. He came to a stump that had dense spiked bushes on both sides and was protected uphill by a tree. The Russian knelt to peer at the ground. Even in the black of night he could see that the needles and leaves and grass had recently been ruffled. Trusov felt the ground and brought up a leaf stained with dried blood. Gray's blood. The American had been here, had used this tree and these bushes as a hide. A good place to begin the stalk again at first light. He leaned against the stump to wait. A bat flitted by.
During those same hours Gray was lying on his belly near the pool. He had gathered handfuls of the damp moss and had held it above his mouth and had squeezed out drops of water. He had spent two hours extracting precious water, in all not more than half a cup, and if it had restored him to any degree he could not feel it. Then he lay on the stream bank and waited for the night to pass. Nights in the Sawtooths are cold, even in summer. Gray spent the dark hours shuddering with cold and pain, his thoughts meandering. He gripped his rifle fiercely as if that might compensate for his slipping mind.
He might have slept. He could not be sure. The first purple light of false dawn found Gray on the moss and dirt, his eyes and his mouth open. He tried to rise, but his body refused. He argued with his body, demanding it rise, and at the first motion the pain from his shoulders and leg and back erupted anew. He gripped his gun. He was so weak he felt nailed to the ground. He crawled forward, away from the dead pool.
He heard a rough scrape. At first he thought it was his father again, clearing his throat for some new pronouncement. He heard it again, carried in the soft wind. He thought it was real, not a trick of his mind, but he could not be sure.
Dawn had begun, streaking the high rim of the bowl in faint purple but leaving the basin in blacks and grays. Gray turned to the south slope to face the sound. He could see nothing. He wrestled his gun to his shoulder anyway and put his eye to the scope.
Trusov had coughed in his sleep, and the ragged sound had brought him out of it. He hugged the ground. In the still bowl, a cough was the equivalent of a foghorn blast. He lay utterly still. His position between the uphill tree and the stump he was leaning against was well protected. Any shot fired his way from the center or the opposite side of the bowl would sail over the stump, and he was below the stump.
Trusov recoiled when the sound of a shot reached him. Gray had fired. At what? Trusov looked left and right. The Russian was well hidden. What had the American fired at?
A full-throated roar suddenly came from above Trusov. He looked skyward, to the uphill pine tree. A wasp nest had a ragged hole through it, and bits of the nest were floating to the ground. And a black ball of wasps was growing in the air next to the nest.
The nest blew apart as the second bullet sailed through it. The sound of the shot followed. Patches of brown paper fluttered to the ground. As wasps streamed out of their fractured nest the black ball of insects floating in the air grew and grew. Then the wasps found their enemy, the alien on the ground below their ruined home.